


Brethren

by Roman



Category: True Blood (TV)
Genre: Angst, Attraction, Canon Compliant, Cruelty, Depression, Desire, Desperation, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jealousy, Kissing, Loss of Control, Love, M/M, Pain, Possessive Behavior, Power Imbalance, Relationship(s), Roughness, Slash, Surprise Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:54:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23580397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roman/pseuds/Roman
Summary: First Eric lost his maker. Long after that, his maker died.Sometimes, "loss" isn't enough of a word.
Relationships: Godric/Eric Northman
Comments: 31
Kudos: 36





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Many eons ago, this was going to be my goodbye to the True Blood fandom (back when it was still roaring). I never got around to posting it, and then time (years!) passed, but I still feel quite proud of a few passages and, at the time, I did keep a patient beta very busy with this fic for a good while. So I thought I'd dust it off now, rework the weak spot, and let it be the full stop I once meant for it to be. If you come across it, hope you enjoy. 
> 
> I'll be posting it in chapters, over the next few days, to force myself to actually finish the job. 
> 
> Warning: This takes place in the same universe as White Nights, with roughly the same mood to it. Godric is deeply depressed. If this is an issue, beware.
> 
> Very belated, but sincere, thanks to Septemberoses on LJ for the beta work on the original version.

Loss.

He had to admit the intensity of the feeling was unexpected.

How many years had it been since he had last known it?

_Ignorant._

He had hardly known how to deal with it then, that desperate disorientation, but he had been different then. So long ago. It might as well not have happened at all.

_Impudent._

Yet it had, it was embedded in him still, Godric venting contemptuously in his face.

The words eating at their bond from the inside, like worms, each of them revealing his maker as a stranger.

_You are of no use to me. I am not like you. What do you know of me?_

Deep as they lay, in the recesses of his memory, Eric was still surprised at how well he remembered them, at how offensively they still rang inside his mind.

_Infant._

They were nothing, really, compared to what he had heard from others, or inflicted on them. They paled in comparison to most of his exchanges with Pam.

But that had been the beginning. It amazed him still that he had not foreseen it.

He thought back to the many similar diatribes that had followed, the ones had deflected, before growing accustomed to them. What an exercise in patience it had been, Godric’s new proclivity for melodrama— a later-life temper, Eric had thought, a misplaced frustration at being so different from ‘the humans that shared their space’... All the rot that Godric had eventually started to verbalise, and never again shut up about.

Eric had not known what he had been fighting. He had refused to acknowledge it.

He still thought it was so unfair that he had lost.

Perhaps he _was_ ignorant.

When he finally acknowledged defeat, he had felt no guilt. He had been drained of it by then. He thought of the night they had broken apart and felt an ugly temper rise inside him, at once murderous and wounded. He could have—no, let us not dwell on that, let us think of the loss.

Every day it returned to him, every night, loss rubbing itself in his face in dreams that lingered after sunset. His impotence, the knowledge that he couldn’t slice through this as he had, once, through his enemies...

He had missed Godric so.

He had hated him so.

It had taken Eric so long to crawl back to form after leaving—no, let’s not dwell on that, let us think of the loss.

On that night, there had been nothing left to lose.

Until tonight, of course. Until _this_ dawn. It had never occurred to Eric that he might one day find himself waiting for the stink of cinders to sweep up his nostrils, longing to be one with them.

The sun was rising. He could sense it on the palms of his hands, pressing hard against the concrete, his arms tensed against the walls of the narrow stairway. It felt warmer, even in the dark. If he turned around, he would surely see the fine, rosy light of dawn wedging under the door to the roof. But he wouldn’t, because beyond lay...

Sookie sobbed. Eric could feel her chest heaving inside his own. He could feel her tears as if they ran down his own cheeks, her gulps at the horror she was about to witness in his own throat.

_Father. Brother. Son._

A hissing heat crawled under his skin, burning a path into his innards, obliterating Sookie’s feelings.

_Let me go._

The concrete felt warm. As did his skin, hissing, bubbling, crawling. With a hurt he had not known he was capable of feeling, Eric realised he couldn’t muster up more tears. He felt feverish, frozen, cold under his hissing skin.

A burning smell slithered up his nose. 

Surely, a stronger word than loss existed.


	2. Companion

He had left the house with a different dead-eyed maiden in mind. This one was so beautiful though, her mouth, her neck, her figure so entrancing that Eric almost had to stop himself being inadvertently glamoured by _her_ when they locked eyes. He walked in walking on clouds, intent on making creative use of every inch of his bedroom before his meal.

Dumping her onto the nearest flat surface in the room, he all but skipped down the staircase, and into the cellar, in search of his best, silkiest, sturdiest ropes. If only he hadn’t indulged Godric’s peculiar tidiness. He much preferred to have his things nearby, but Godric always insisted on following the established pattern, always wanted to remain up-to-date with ‘the human way’. Godric could be a bore, sometimes.

And there Eric had found him, huddled against the oak barrels of the previous owners’ prized cognac, facing away from the door. He was apparently deep in conversation with the mice colony. They looked remarkably unafraid of him.

‘Godric?’ he called out, amazed to see his maker plopped down on the filthy floor he despised. Godric had not had a companion or new reading material in quite some time. Perhaps he was so bored he had resorted to training their mice.

‘Yes,’ The word came out tired, hollow, as though Godric was barely awake, but Eric sensed, he knew, he wished he had not known Godric’s eyes would be wide open, empty and unblinking. Maiden, ropes and purpose forgotten, he scrunched himself gingerly down behind his maker.

‘Why are you here?’

‘Why not?’

With great difficulty, and after something of a struggle with the oak barrels, Eric managed to squeeze himself along the space. Godric’s shoulder gave a little twitch at the brush of Eric’s long hair, but he didn’t budge, so Eric was wedged between him and the biggest barrel, twisting his neck so he could at least see the profile of Godric’s face.

‘It’s not comfortable here,’ Eric croaked out redundantly.

Godric tilted his head to look at him in that limpid, almost childlike way that Eric was growing to hate.

‘You smell of clovers,’ Godric raised an indolent hand to push aside the hair that had flown onto Eric’s eyes, ‘and of company. Were you out?’

‘Yes, just for a bit—’ Eric replied, not knowing why he felt the need to justify himself. ‘I brought a girl.’

‘Did you?’ Godric asked listlessly. ‘Good...’

‘Will you come upstairs with me?’ Eric murmured, desperately clueless once more, moving closer than he would usually dare. But then, that first night, when he...he had taken the first step then as well. ‘You can see her—feed from her.’

Godric stared blankly at him, shaking his head so very lightly it almost looked like a reflex. His fingers lingered, forgotten, on Eric’s hair.

‘Poor Eric.’ The fingertips pressed lightly into Eric’s cheek and slipped away. Godric’s gaze fell again on the cracks on the floor. The mice scurried and stopped to tilt their tiny noses up at this friendly boy, and he repeated, ‘Poor Eric...’ as though he meant to inform them that this was his child.

‘Come, let’s feed,’ Eric invited, as softly as he could make himself sound, and Godric’s eyes went blank again.

Resigning himself to the notion that he was to play the father again tonight, Eric shifted and shoved the wooden barrels until he could sit facing Godric.

‘Come here.’

‘No...’ But the word was empty, as hollow as the previous ‘Yes?’ had been, and when Eric leaned in gently, with his hands on the barrels either side of Godric’s shoulders, he didn’t pull away.

‘Tell me again what I smell of.’

Godric tilted his chin, raising his eyes with painful slowness. Eric waited.

‘Cloves. Beer... and oxen,’ Godric murmured, leaning into him at last. The faint breath of the words brushed past Eric’s ear. ‘What have you been doing...’

Eric waited until he could feel skin against his shoulder, his neck, his cheek, before dropping his hands from the barrels. Only when Godric’s head felt weightier against him did he wind his arms around the slumped form of his maker. Only when he felt prim, fastidious hands clawing at his bloodied shirt, pressing it to empty eyes, and a shuddering breath against his neck, did he tighten the grip, press his neck against reluctant fangs, allow a breath of his own to blow past them. Godric’s fangs, only half-unsheathed, lay unresistingly, but uninterested, against Eric’s neck. Cursing himself for it, feeling soiled by it, Eric dredged up the strength, unsheathed his own fangs, and tightened the embrace to crush the emptiness away.

Long after, Death walked upstairs and claimed the empty-eyed girl that lay waiting without any of the anticipated flourishes. Death had had enough hollow stares for the night.

-x-

Their new location agreed with Godric. The town’s new trend pleased him, all those sprawling public spaces softening the heavy Gothic buildings. He could put his interest in architecture to use without feeling constricted by cobbled streets and heavy shadows. There were grand new buildings awash with moonlight. It was the furthest place Eric could find from their gloomy old house by the sea front.

Godric found a new companion not long after their arrival, a self-styled philosopher whom he would sit and listen to for hours. Eric did not particularly care for this tiresome boy, with his cheeky remarks that he and Eric looked just alike (‘Are you sure you never fathered a child in Rotterdam?’). He rabbitted on for ages about issues he had neither the age nor the experience to understand, lips plumped to hint _just so_ at a condescending smirk. Godric’s eyes would light up and a brief but heartfelt smile would pull at his lips. Eric usually took his leave then.

Eric sometimes had to admit the boy presented himself charmingly enough. He sauntered up and down the room theorising away, shouted at the walls in feigned indignation and settled immediately down beside Godric, one hand wrapped around Godric’s wrist with a familiarity Eric did not have, eyes burning with the need to learn Godric’s opinion, eager to challenge it into the wee hours. He made Godric laugh with his overwrought impressions of people Godric knew only vaguely from the evening newspapers. He wiped himself across the furniture, tousling his hair to better make a point about something or other that Eric would never even consider developing an interest in, and it might have been just his admittedly astonishing good looks, but Eric could not deny he was somehow coaxing Godric back into his normal self.

Even with a prickle of envy at that easy familiarity, Eric could not help but feel a bit grateful.

Ever so slowly, with great care, he locked his worry away, airing it out only when Godric’s furrowed brow cast a longer shadow, or when his silences became just that little bit heavier. It was rare now. Eric felt more secure, proud even, that he could recognise the signs, the _moods_ , when no companion, however young, handsome and charming, could. When Godric’s moods came, and he became bitter and spiteful, Eric could not help his embarrassment, his anger at the treatment he received. Or his impotent pity, whenever the mood took Godric down a lonely, dark path. But then, neither could he help but scoot closer, allow his arms to cushion the anguish, the pain that followed, and abandon himself to the role of... to it.

And he was always rewarded for his efforts. Godric was never more indulgent, more like his old self, than in the following sunsets. They never discussed it and, as the world thundered forward, Godric’s moods faded away. Eric’s own raging blood thirst was bowing gradually to an ability to bide his time he had not possessed as a human. They were getting old, Eric sometimes joked to himself.


	3. Storyteller

One night, Eric recalled, he told a fable.

Fate had turned its blind, spiteful attentions on them once more, reminding Eric’s swaggering conceit that immortality was a poor weapon, and that he made for a weak adversary.

Eric had never particularly relished the disposal of the evening’s spoils, even less so while he was still basking in the afterglow, but he had not yet found a way to make corpses dispose of themselves, and he didn’t like to wake up to the sight and smell of them. He was walking up the stairs after dealing with that inconvenient detail of nightly life when a strong wind rushed past him and into his bedroom. The trail of frenzied panic it left in its wake crawled under Eric’s skin, freezing him on the spot. It took him a moment to attune his rigid muscles to his mind and convince them that _he_ had no reason to be frightened.

‘Godric,’ he called out gingerly, walking into the room and towards the bed, where the strong wind had burrowed under Eric’s freshly soiled covers.

‘You said I could come,’ was the muffled reply, accusatory beneath the fright.

‘I know.’

‘Then I stay.’ Godric sounded stroppy, fearful. It pained Eric to hear such a childlike tone issuing from his impregnable old maker. Sitting down beside the lump on his bed, Eric wondered what ugly memory Godric was chasing away this time, and how it was possible that someone so amoral had so many regrets.

‘Why?’

The lump beside him froze. ‘You don’t want me here?’

‘I want to know why you’re here. I can’t help you otherwise.’

‘You can’t help me at all. Leave me alone.’ The covers were sucked further onto the lump, and it apparently rolled over to face away from him.

For a moment, Eric wished that he, too, could have the strength to turn away and leave Godric to this immense misery that so overwhelmed him, that Eric could feel in his own veins. And the very next second, despising himself, he heard gentle words fighting their way out of his lips.

‘The linen is too dirty for you. Let me get you something clean.’

He should have ignored it all from the start, given it less importance, snipped this ridiculous fancy in the bud. Instead, he continually opened his arms to Godric’s gloom, feeling guilty for not having seen the agony inside the one who was most precious to him. Sometimes, Eric wondered if Godric was merely testing his loyalty. Death had no remorse; Death did not shiver under soiled bedding.

‘Did you hear me?’ One day he would lock his door and leave Godric to moan and groan the day away. After sunset, they would see if all this was not just an elaborate ruse for attention. He tugged at the edge of the covers, which swiftly fled from his fingers.

‘Don’t let the light in!’

‘There’s no light here. Just a candle.’ Eric’s rebellious fantasies pulverised once again, as always, with the utter dread in Godric’s voice. He would lock his door next time. Next time, he would make his point.

‘Don’t let it in,’ Godric’s muffled voice repeated. The covers trembled very lightly atop him, and a faint smell of very aged blood reached Eric’s nostrils. He had to resist both the lure of the blood and the urge to rip Godric from under his hiding place to see why he bled. Was he injured, perhaps? Then he would heal quickly.

‘Will you let _me_ in?’ he suggested, far lighter in tone than he felt, all his illusions of leaving Godric to his mood decidedly forgotten as the bedclothes swayed more pronouncedly and a raspy sound accompanied the smell. ‘It _is_ my bed, after all.’

‘No!’

The terror in the word reverberated through the fabric. Under it, Godric froze, and Eric took the moment to lie down on the empty side of the bed, slowing his movements so they wouldn’t startle Godric. He would never get used to the notion that his maker could be frightened.

‘I’m too tired to find another bed. We’ll have to share.’

The rasping resumed, but Godric did not speak again.

‘I’m happy that you came,’ Eric murmured after a bit, lying through his teeth, willing himself, once again, to take the first step and put an end to this. He had promised, on that first, dreadful night, to accompany Godric into whatever nightmarish visions his mind conjured up, and Godric had come for that. Against his will, pride once again surged inside him, to know that Godric, the oldest, most powerful vampire he knew, needed him so much. His maker was bleeding on his bed. And he needed Eric. And this was probably the reason his door was always open, would always be open to Godric’s struggles.

‘I missed you,’ whispered against the fabric, disgusted with himself and appalled to find that he meant it.

Godric’s squirming eased.

‘I see so little of you when you have a companion,’ Eric added with genuine bitterness. Some points could only be made now, when Godric was least like himself. ‘Where is the boy?’

‘Gone,’ Godric mumbled indifferently.

‘Is he coming back?’

‘No.’

Eric shifted on the mattress so he could reach out and touch the dirty lump beside him. ‘So he won’t mind if I join you?’

‘No, don’t.’

‘Let me see you,’ Eric insisted, moving closer and taking full advantage of the heat left in his veins by the evening’s feeding. Godric always felt – always said that he felt - cold during these times, and a warm Eric tended to leave him malleable. ‘Let me join you.’

‘No, the light...’

‘If I blow out the candle, will you let me in?’ He all but cooed, in his most adoring, most harmless voice. His arm was fully around Godric’s slumped form now. Both the squirming and the bleeding had stopped, which was a relief. He could take his time now. ‘I missed you.’

Godric remained quiet and still, but he was alert, tense under Eric’s arm.

‘I was afraid you would replace me with the boy.’ A mild exaggeration for a good cause. ‘I thought you might be doing this with him, letting him keep you company through the hard days.’

‘Nobody keeps me company,’ Godric snapped. ‘I’m alone.’

‘Not alone,’ Eric chided smoothly, blowing hot air into the fabric. ‘You came to me. Let me in,’ he whispered towards what he imagined was Godric’s ear, just as a reminder of the proximity. He let his lips linger there. ‘I missed you.’

‘Don’t let the light in,’ Godric repeated quietly, and Eric knew he had won.

‘I’m pinching out the candle,’ Eric informed him, following his words with the action. Godric rolled over and grappled in the dark, pulling and tugging until he was satisfied the bedding over them was completely light tight. Now there was only one last formality to do away with.

‘May I touch you?’

Godric didn’t reply with words. Eric felt him inching closer, curling up to stop Eric touching him _too_ much. His hand reached carefully up to close Eric’s eyes. Eric obeyed. The smell of aged blood on Godric’s hand made his fangs itch, and Eric had to remind himself that this was his maker, and that his maker was unwell.

‘Are you comfortable?’ he folded a soothing arm underneath Godric’s head. Only he could be so close to Godric at times like this. So many centuries of love and affection. ‘Will you tell me why you came?’

Godric hugged himself silently, shutting him out even as they touched. Repressing a sigh, Eric let one of his hands traipse up Godric’s shirt in search of the dizzying scent, and what would surely be a healing wound. His hand landed squarely on the winding mark etched onto Godric’s left arm. The fabric felt damp. Godric all but jolted away.

‘Don’t touch it!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Eric said sweetly, draping a gentle but firm arm across him. ‘Come here. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t touch it.’ Godric snapped, but Eric did, and in the space of a breath his voice went from the harsh tone of his barbarian maker to the pleading of a supplicant. ‘I don’t want you to touch it, I don’t want you to touch me, I take it back, I won’t allow it.’

Godric balled himself up to lessen the feel of Eric’s arm. All at once, he was shivering. He could have thrown Eric off but did not. Eric felt dirty.

‘Get off,’ Godric said, and this time Eric could not do anything other than give his maker his freedom. This was all a new development. What was going on tonight?

‘Are you injured?’

Godric paused before replying. Then he shifted slowly away, saying simply, ‘I’m going back to my room.’

‘The hallways are well-lit,’ Eric pointed out, and Godric froze. ‘And the mirrors are uncovered,’ he added, in sudden inspiration. Godric settled back down onto the mattress. ‘Is that the matter? You don’t want to look at yourself?’

Godric’s head shook violently and he curled up, facing away from Eric. The rasping resumed, and Eric was surprised that it had taken him so long to realise it was the sound of feverish scratching.

‘Let me help,’ he insisted, stilling one of Godric’s hands with his and not daring go under Godric’s shirt to still the other.

‘ _Don’t touch me.’_

‘Just as soon as you stop hurting yourself.’

‘They _itch_.’

‘They don’t. They _can’t_ ,’ Eric said disbelievingly, shoving away the bedclothes that tangled around them. ‘Let me see.’

‘ _No.’_

Godric grasped emptily at his slipping shield and, for a moment, there was only the heavy rustle of clothing and the smell of the human blood of Eric’s dinner rising around them. It all came to a sudden stop when Eric pressed his hand to the small of Godric’s back, holding him down to have a proper look, well, as much as the moonlight allowed, at the back of his maker’s shirt. It was peppered in blood, dots and smudges of varying colours creating a rough pattern of the ink on Godric’s skin; when he lifted his hand, the fabric remained pasted to the skin beneath it. 

On Godric’s shoulder, dark layers of clotted blood mingled with vivid, fresh ones in a blot that effectively mimicked the ridged burn mark, filled for eternity in red ink, which Godric sported there. Eric reached out for it, disregarding the aggressive hiss that Godric let out, and spun him around to face him. Resolutely refusing to look at him, Godric threw an arm over his face and turned away while Eric took in the sight of Godric’s shirt collar, covered in blood.

Shutting out the lure of the smell, he lowered his hand to that redness, and Godric’s arm flew fitfully down from his face to his collarbone. That only bared his upper arm further, and it, too, was bloody, thick droplets winding out of the deeper scratches, matting the fabric. The atmosphere on the bed was, all at once, quite heavy.

‘Godric?’ he murmured, too incredulous to complete the absurd question. _Were you trying to claw them out?_ Godric’s arm tightened against his collarbone, and he stared stubbornly at the wall. Eric’s hand cradled Godric’s cheek, turning it firmly towards him. When their eyes finally met Godric looked like he might cry. Stunned by the sight, Eric let go at once, and Godric’s head lolled to the left.

‘Tell me what this is about,’ he demanded. Godric had never actively hurt himself. He had spent the last few centuries teaching Eric how to avoid it. He had no right to come to Eric’s bedroom, to Eric’s _bed_ , bleeding onto Eric’s bed sheets, and refuse to tell him why. No right at all. ‘ _Tell me_ ,’ he repeated cuttingly.

‘They are ugly,’ Godric said desolately, adding as an afterthought, barely as a whisper, ‘Demonic.’

Eric had to take a moment to collect his thoughts. ‘Demonic?’ he echoed idiotically.

‘So ugly...’ Godric set his jaw and continued to scrub at the ink he had once paraded so proudly, the godly hallow his people had chosen him to bear. Eric stilled his hand again and Godric ground his teeth, but did not fight off his child. He looked so miserable. Eric felt transported to the cluelessness of so long ago, as though he had learnt nothing, aged not at all since then. It was absurd, laughable, that Godric was heeding those halfwit townsfolk’s myths. _Demonic?_ Was their existence not proof that, should the gods exist, they were too busy with their own affairs beyond the stars and under the ground to care about their little strip of land? Was this where Godric’s constant philosophising led?

‘They’re not ugly at all,’ he forced himself to counter, with a softness he didn’t feel. ‘They’re a mark of your divinity. Remember? You were chosen—singled out for the honour. ’

‘I don’t know why I said that.’ Godric hiccupped and cleared his throat before continuing, in that hollow tone that made the hair rise in Eric’s neck. ‘I don’t even remember receiving them. What they mean. You must remember each one of your scars,’ he added, accusatory, as though the cracks in his memory were somehow Eric’s fault. ‘You must be proud of them.’

Eric had not given much thought to his scars in recent times, and it was discomfiting to find himself so embarrassed by Godric’s tone. ‘You used to be proud of your marked skin as well. You must remember why you received them. You’re just tired.’

‘They hurt,’ Godric ground out, shutting his eyes against the memory. ‘I remember that. They still hurt now.’

‘They can’t hurt now. It’s all in your mind.’

‘I was a child.’ Godric raised his eyes pleadingly to Eric’s. ‘Wasn’t I? I must have been. I look so young. Why would anybody do this to me? Were they sending me to Hell? What had I done?’

‘You cannot be sent anywhere,’ Eric reminded him. ‘You’re not human. You’re a god. You’re stronger than the gods— ’

‘I want a new skin,’ Godric wheezed. ‘This one hurts—‘

‘Look at me. It’s in your mind. They don’t hurt. They were bestowed upon you—‘

‘I want a new self—‘

‘—because you were found worthy of them. I’m sure of it. It’ll come back to you.’

‘You can say so,’ Godric droned on, with a flash of his impatient old self. ‘You look like an angel. You can be anyone, anywhere you like. I look like a demon the moment I undress, no matter where I go, always a creature of the nether world...’

_Angel?_ Eric started counting in silence to calm himself down. He got to four and gave up.

‘Look at me,’ Eric raised his voice above the tirade, cradling Godric’s face with both hands to get his attention. ‘Look at me. I _know_ you’re not a demon. I _know_ you were branded as a god. Your ink tells me so. I’ve heard its story. _Do you hear me_? I’ve heard it. I remember it.’

Godric quieted down, but now he stared at a spot over Eric’s shoulder, fixedly but with a wide-eyed desperation that spoke of a waking nightmare, and his body had gone limp. Eric’s skin crawled.

Suddenly aware that his hands must feel painful against Godric’s cheeks, he softened his touch, letting his fingertips linger to keep Godric facing him. ‘Would you like me to tell it? Maybe it’ll help you remember.’

‘Can you?’ Godric’s despairing eyes turned back to his, a hint of interest in his voice, a childlike curiosity starting to emerge. How young he must have been, Eric mused, searching his memory for the tales he, himself, had been told as a boy, only beginning to worship the gods.

‘This,’ he began, carefully rolling up the sleeve that hid the zigzagging stripes around Godric’s arm, ‘I’m sure, is Bilröst, the shimmering bridge to heaven. I had heard of it, but never saw it until I met you. It is the gods’ alone. It stands between the mortal world and Asgard, and it is fragile, like a god’s mood. It catches fire and burns down very easily. It must be treated with care.’

Godric’s eyes left his only to follow the progression of Eric’s fingers along his arm. His brow furrowed briefly as he tried to recall any connection between Eric’s words and his own painful, disjointed memories.

‘May I touch it?’

Godric gave a minuscule nod and Eric considered for a moment if this might be too much. In the end, he decided that if he were adequately reverent, it might not be. Instead of his hand, he lowered his lips to the winding ink, brushing it gently. ‘You are the bridge to my maker,’ he murmured to the skin, ‘and I bow before you.’

Godric let out a surprised breath and listened more intently.

‘The runes on your right arm... may I look at them? It has been a long time. I want to be sure.’

Godric rolled up his sleeve, slow and hesitant, and looked forlornly at the inscriptions. ‘I don’t know what they mean.’

‘I do,’ Eric replied, sparing a moment to thank the deities he was invoking for Godric’s unexpectedly poor knowledge of runes. Perhaps he had learnt something different as a boy. ‘I was told these words many times. They tell the story of Ífingr. “ _The river/That 'twixt the realms of the gods and the giants goes/For all time ever/Open it flows/No ice on the river there is,_ ”’ he quoted. ‘Ífingr runs fast and strong—too fast for ice to form on it. It shields the gods from the giants.’

‘Is that really what it says?’

‘Yes,’ Eric lied remorselessly. ‘Ífingr, you shield my maker from harm and sail me to his protection. I bow to you,’ he added, pressing a kiss to the vivid woad of the runes. Godric’s tense muscles pushed against the skin. ‘Do you like it now? 

Godric hesitated, then gave a little shrug.

‘I haven’t finished. Do you want to hear about the ones on your back?’

‘They are ugly.’

‘They’re unpleasant,’ Eric corrected diplomatically, ‘because they speak of terrible things. But they are very meaningful. May I see them?’

‘Must you?’

‘They were once my gods and demons. I must show them proper deference and not address them as though they are not present. They are here—in you.’

Godric considered the idea for a moment. Then he rose to unbutton his shirt, pausing every now and then and holding his sleeve-clad arms tightly to his chest once the fabric slipped down his back. Eric sat behind him, criss-crossing his fingers along the length of the serpent on his maker’s spine.

‘Níðhöggr,’ he called out contemptuously. ‘You nestle under the tree of life to tear apart the bodies of sinners. What business have you troubling my maker, when I am more bloodthirsty than he, I am a perjurer and an adulterer and he is not? How dare you gnaw at the roots of your shelter? You are wicked, and I do not bow to you. Instead, I will bow to my maker’s great generosity in providing you with a haven when none other would.’

He had spoken more heatedly than he had meant to, and his lips lingered just above the serpent’s head while he collected himself. Godric’s shoulders wavered and he gripped his sleeves more tightly.

‘I’m sorry. My temper ran away with me,’ Eric whispered into his skin, moving to the right, towards the repulsive brand that marred his maker’s shoulder. He could not even recognise half the signs in it.

‘This one you know better than I, Godric. Ragnarökr hides under secular symbols so that its true nature remains concealed until the time comes. But the time came, and you were there. All you feel now is the reverberation of that frightful moment. The Doom of the Gods—it was destruction and rebirth. It brought forth the death of the old gods and it elevated two mortals to godly status. All that followed is an echo.’

Godric looked over his shoulder, frowning at Eric’s words. Eric was careful not to look up from the hideous brand. It seemed somewhat less ugly now he had given it a meaning.

‘I am grateful to the world that is no more, to the gods that perished, and to Ragnarökr for the gift of my maker. I am honoured that I was chosen to partake in his life. I bow to you all.’ He did not kiss the brand, but pressed his forehead to it, steadying himself for the last effort. Godric’s skin shuddered against his.

‘I would like to put my shirt on again.’ Godric said primly, after a few seconds.

‘Of course.’ Eric slid across the bed to face him. ‘But let me see the mark across your chest. Ah, yes. It is larger than I remembered. I’m not surprised. Forgive me, Yggdrasill,’ he whispered deferentially, touching his fingertips to the centre of the string of teardrops that encircled Godric’s neck. ‘but I cannot bow to you. I could never rise again.’

‘Is it also terrible?’ Godric asked, looking down expectantly. Eric raised his thumbs to coax Godric’s chin gently upwards. He would quite like to have Godric’s eyes on him for the tale’s ending.

‘Yggdrasill is you.’ Eric paused to observe the effect of his words. Godric’s chest twitched under his fingertips. ‘The world tree, the fountain of life, root of all knowledge, foundation of all worlds.’ Tracing his fingers along Godric’s collarbone, he placed them at both ends of the string, like so many branches of a tree. ‘You gave me strength,’ he whispered solemnly, moving his fingertips to the next two branches. ‘You gave me insight.’ And the next two. ‘You gave me experience.’ He would never know where he had found the vocabulary to traipse down the string back to its centre, where his palm rested atop Godric’s unbeating heart. He dare not look up, fearing this would all unravel helplessly at the last second. ‘You gave me life, and you share it with me. I revere _you_.’

He gave it a pensive few seconds and dropped his hand. Godric did not move from where he sat, and Eric wondered if he should look up. He was exhausted. He had run out of tales.

‘Do you remember now?’ he asked in a whisper, musing to himself that _he_ half-believed his story now.

‘I think so.’ Confidence was building in Godric’s voice. If he did not believe the story, then he desperately wanted to do so. ‘I was singled out for divinity.’

‘You would not bear divine markings otherwise.’ Eric lay down, too tired now to think of the bloodstains on his bedding.

‘I could never live up to such expectations,’ Godric muttered to himself, newly desolate. ‘Perhaps that’s why I died.’

Eric’s eyes snapped open, instantly alert.

‘You revere me, like they did.’ Godric pointed out over his shoulder, turning to lie beside Eric. ‘Do you find me wanting?’

‘What?’

‘You want everyone,’ Godric said ponderingly, ‘It’s all you do with your eternity. But not me. Never me. Have I failed you?’

These words awakened thoughts that alarmed Eric, that he couldn’t begin to understand. For the moment, though, he counted himself lucky that, this once, he need not wrack his mind for ambiguous replies. ‘I can have anybody’s flesh. From you, I want—’ he paused. ‘You know I would lie with you. You have but to say so.’

Godric showed no interest in doing so. ‘I just wondered,’ he said absently.

Eric shifted to face him and, not for the first time, found his maker’s expression too inscrutable to read. ‘Have I displeased you?’

Godric shook his head. ‘I was thinking about how particular I have become. Do you not wonder about that, curse me under your breath when I invade your room?’

‘I would curse you if you invaded another’s room. It would not be under my breath.’

Godric smiled briefly and raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I think I’d quite like a kiss. If that’s all right,’ he added primly. ‘I’m very cold.’

Eric’s hand on his cheek tilted him towards his child again. Eric thought of the intoxicating scent of Godric’s aged blood, of his maker’s wide, empty eyes looking for his reassurance, he recalled the way his fangs had itched when Godric allowed his touch, the way Godric had permitted Eric’s roughness without breaking every bone in him, the way he had bared himself to Eric’s tales, and allowed Eric’s lips to touch his skin. The way this time, just this time, Godric had wondered why Eric didn’t want him. _From you, I want_ —

He laid a feather-light kiss, barely a touch, on Godric’s cheek, and he felt a hand tangling in his hair. His lips brushed Godric’s other cheek, and the hold on his hair tightened. His hair was covered in the blood of his dinner. Godric always looked at it like there were worms in it. Godric’s other hand reached up, crawling along his scalp. Eric rested his mouth on the bloodied mark that he had touched so reverently seconds ago. Thinking of Godric’s desperate scratching, he despised himself for wanting to bite it.

‘You may,’ Godric said in reply to his unasked question, baring himself just as he had shied away earlier. The words made Eric’s blood ferment, sent Eric’s arms around him, heedless now of the deference due to divinity, and the fangs that had ached all night finally descended on Godric’s flesh. Godric’s own fangs brushed his neck, where the veins tensed against his skin, calling out for their maker.

‘I would revere you,’ he heard Godric say before his thoughts splintered, ‘were I a better god.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I remember this being one of my favourite chapters to write, because of all the research it made me do into Norse mythology, about which I knew nothing, and which I doubt most people will care about, but I feel like Godric would. And it was the closest I came, I think, to understanding Eric's reverence.


	4. Desire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: alongside the main, er, events in this chapter, someone in the background (non-graphically, more implied than described) is on the receiving end of some really intense sexual and physical violence. If this is a concern, proceed with caution.

Godric was out again, exploring the streets that he must surely know by heart at this point. Eric sighed. The town was not without its charm, but it had nothing to offer, no secrets in its labyrinthine little streets. He had raided the surroundings in his human days. They had made for an insignificant target then, and not much had changed. But the new gas streetlights, flooding the night, had mesmerised Godric as soon as they arrived. In the dead of night, when everyone slept, he would leave Eric without a word and wander for hours, drawn to the play of light and shadow as through it opened a door into another world.

Walking past the railway station, he was surprised that Godric was not there, gazing at the work in quiet admiration as usual. Godric had insisted they wait until its completion, and Eric wanted nothing but to indulge him, but the size of the town worried him. Godric, and experience, had taught him that they were safer in deserted places, or very populated ones, where they could prowl unnoticed. Towns like this, growing too quickly for Eric’s vigilance, but still dense enough that everyone was under constant watch, were dangerous. Much like the place itself, the populace had not changed much since the old witch hunts.

The sun had just set. A merchant, dismantling his stall in the marketplace, tipped his hat to Eric.

‘Evening, sir.’

He liked this pious lord who had moved into the big riverside house with his son and only came out for evening prayers for his recently-dead wife and the feeble health of his boy. He always came out on foot, he looked straight at people, not sniffy like the other aristos in their carriages, and he was so respectable. When they came out together, the son would stop at every market stall still in business and buy food. He’d stare at it and not eat it, and then he’d give it to the poor huddled in the corners. The merchant would look at father and son, and from Eric’s glare, recognisable to every parent, he would bet money on how the boy was being forced to show some of the father’s piety. He didn’t much like this sullen boy trudging alongside Eric as if every step was a favour he was doing his father. He, himself, would have given the brat a good few lashings by now.

The merchant’s son might have seen Eric late at night, prowling the places of ill repute, but his hard-working father had not.

Most evenings Godric insisted on going to church, sitting at the very back and listening to the pleadings of the faithful. He would not pray, but he would sit placidly, lost in thought. This was the dullest part of Eric’s existence, but he could not refuse Godric when he asked for company. The sight of people’s pain and hope, their fevered yearning for a better tomorrow, did seem to give Godric some peace; he would come home with a lighter step, he would joke and talk, and they would enjoy the early evening together. Occasionally, they would even hunt together, and it felt like the old days. 

Eric’s constant, stoic company to his sullen son had quickly spread all sorts of overwrought rumours about the boy. He was very sick. He hadn’t recovered from his mother’s death. Maybe she had been killed. He might have killed her himself. Those who were up late enough to witness his lonely walks would say he never went looking for women, and they would snigger about what he may be seeking instead. Some would whisper that one day, when his father wasn’t there – and God was looking away – they might give him what he was looking for, make him squeak, teach him a lesson. He must be perverted.

He must not be right in the head.

What a shame he must be for his dignified father, drawn daily to the church in obvious sorrow for his wife, pointedly ignoring the discreet flirting of maidens and spinsters alike. How devout and sorrowful Eric looked, and how handsome.

As far as the men were concerned, if anything, the dignified way he tried to steer his unmanly son to the good path made him _more_ popular.

As he walked down the streets, Eric sometimes reflected that, this season, he was part of a community that did not fear him, but rather admired his upstanding godliness. It made him want to laugh.

And he very nearly did, as he meandered towards the well-lit public house that also served as the town’s unofficial brothel. The laughter came not from his thoughts, though, but from outside. It was Godric, experiencing a wave of anticipation so intense, Eric closed his eyes to savour the feeling. It was almost joyous. He wondered what could prompt Godric to feel that way.

The thought that maybe Godric had found company wormed into his mind. It was a strange idea. Godric shared none of Eric’s interest in casual entertainment—everything with him was always deep, deathly serious.

He had been companionless for rather a while, though.

But no amount of intricate railway designs or half-crumbling buildings could have roused the odd mix of elation and pain that reverberated in Eric’s veins now. Eric could not imagine a reason for it that did not involve slim young shapes, smirking lips and muscled arms under flimsy shirts, for Godric could not possibly have found an intellectual match among this pathetic crowd. Well. If Godric had found some pleasure, Eric was glad of it.

It was dark now. On to his own fun.

Yet the thought of a stranger, a _casual_ stranger wheedling Godric out of his grey stupor gnawed unpleasantly at him. Doing it with his touch, his hands, his sweat, where Eric’s adoring patience achieved nothing. Eric watched the rail workers heading in and out of the brothel and imagined one of them breezing past Godric’s fastidiousness with a casual roll on dusty floorboards. Or one of the farmhands, clammy from the long walk into town. Godric parting his prim lips to smelly, broken pants, allowing the feel of rough, damp clothes on him, in a quick, stolen rut against a shaky wall... no. Perhaps Godric made them take their clothes off first. Godric allowing the feel of sticky skin on his, probing with his prim hands the grimy, panting, work-worn curves of a one-night companion... The image of Godric baring himself to the touch of sweaty hands flashed, unbidden, in Eric’s eyes. A grubby, faceless body rubbing itself against the ink on Godric’s body, full of desire —

There were things they could not give each other, Eric reminded himself, stopping these thoughts in their tracks and walking more briskly. It was a good thing that Godric had found the energy to seek them elsewhere.

The sound of laughter and drunken singing lured him towards the well-attended house planted at the very edge of town, and Eric did not dwell for very long on whether to join it. Being part of respectable society had a decided advantage over his usual approach. In a brothel there was no mess, no late night clean up, only the thrill of strategically relieving his company of their sweet warm blood. And so far he had managed not to fully drain anyone. Quietly thanking his nature for the gift of glamouring, he joined the laughter and the music.

It was high summer; the night would be short. In the clearing by the public house, a few girls were already hard at work with some of the young men Eric had seen in church, the ones who could not afford the fee for a bed. To the side, two—no, three men gazed thickly at each other, suckling their respective pints, hoping to quench their ungodly desires.

Humans were ridiculous.

One of the men forsook his pint for a handful of the first thing in a skirt that walked past him—she slapped him away with a tinkling laugh and let herself disappear into a larger group, which had cleared a space for itself away from the rutting pairs, in a swaying, drunkenly chortling circle. Every now and then, a man or a woman would be squeezed in, vanish into the gaggle, and much giggling, guffawing, squealing, occasional grunting would follow, before someone else crawled out in one or another state of severe undress.

They were entertaining in their ridiculousness, and their loud amusements distracted him from Godric’s emotions, rumbling at the back of his head. That humming anticipation was so intense now, it weighed down on Eric’s thoughts. It almost hurt. Had Godric ever reacted so intensely to Eric’s presence? Perhaps differently.

A half-naked woman left the circle, and another took her place, jokingly holding her skirts in place against the pawing that followed. Prodded by one of his friends, one of the youths with the drinks and the unmentionable desires followed her. His other mate gave him a pained, angry look, which he missed as he downed his pint, untucked his grimy shirt, and the circle closed around him. It didn’t take long for his voice to rise above the others. There was much sweary cheering, a few whistles. Underneath it all, the slapping and grinding of bodies on the dirt filtered into Eric’s ears, soiling the other sound, inside his mind, of Godric’s deep, shuddery breath. Under his skin, he could feel the pressure of Godric’s fingers into the body of another. He could conjure up a catch in Godric’s breath, a gasp, maybe. A groan? No. Eric had never heard a groan from Godric. 

The laughter grew quieter and for a moment the grinding, the slapping, the breathy swearing rose above all else. Then the circle swayed in ecstatic shouting. Eric considered joining them for a second, but thought better of it. They smelled.

Just as he was turning away, two young men broke away from the merry circle. One clamoured for his heirloom silver chain, comically brandishing his scraggy arms to threaten perdition on whoever had taken it; the other slurred at him to go fetch it.

‘It was my mother’s!’

‘Shouldn’t have brought it to the whorehouse, then, should you?’

‘Thief!’

Knuckles spoke from then onwards, and Eric lost interest in the proceedings. Was there a woman around these parts who was still sober enough to smile adoringly at him before gifting her blood to him or not? One with blue eyes that glazed over as he bared his fangs...

One pair of such eyes turned towards him. Their owner had also thought about joining the circle, and had ultimately decided she needed another client more than a laugh.

‘Need a hand, jewel?’ she cooed as mellifluously as the ale allowed. ‘Or a leg?’ She bounded towards him vertically enough.

He wrinkled his nose at the reek from the loud, lusty group. The quarrellers had rejoined it, best friends once again. Eric surprised himself at how, suddenly, it all felt so revolting. Godric’s taste for neatness must be rubbing off on him. ‘I have particular tastes.’

She steered him towards the door. ‘There’ll be something for you in here.’ She took his hand and ran it down her front and against her skirts in a clear message. At that precise moment, a pang of agony burst inside him, and Eric could not budge. It hurt, it repelled him, it made his skin crawl, it pounded inside him _again_ , so loathsome, so intense that it veered so very close to ecstasy, and Eric’s knees almost buckled. Eric found himself staring stupidly around. What a time for Godric to go into one of his panics, he thought dumbly. Perhaps he had chosen a rougher partner this time, and Eric was being subjected to it too. Godric’s reticence fading before a wiry, forceful lover, his restrained form being ripped into by a grunting, faceless—Eric shook the idea out of his head and tried with all his might to dull his senses to his maker’s.

From inside the circle, the voice of a man grunted at his chosen partner in a shower of insults, and everyone cheered him on. The grinding and the wet slapping grew more frantic again.

‘Are you all right, jewel? Do you want to go inside?’ The girl’s voice buzzed in his ears. Behind her back, an oily little man staggered out of the merry circle, wiping at a split lip. The scent of the blood helped the world come into Eric’s focus again. Another man promptly took the other’s place, dropping his breeches as he loudly swore his way into the throng. There was a muffled thud and more swearing, and the circle went back into its rhythm. More swearing, laughter from the women, cheering from the men.

The throe ripping through Eric subsided, and a serene, oddly detached peacefulness echoed inside him instead. Perhaps Godric and his man had finished. At last. They might rest in each other’s arms now. Would Godric allow it? Godric lowering himself to the rough embrace of a callused farmhand. The girl with the big blue eyes was losing interest. Suddenly, Eric did not want her to go. He needed company of his own.

‘Yes. Let’s go inside. I’ll buy you a drink.’

He pushed her unceremoniously through the threshold, and breathed in a dozen varieties of the cheapest perfume. Behind their backs, a shocked ‘Oh, fuck me...!’ rose from the cheering in the merry circle, swiftly followed by a far breathier ‘Fuck me...’ and a host of expletives Eric did not care to identify. His girl smelled all right. She must not have had very many clients tonight. Well, he would keep her busy enough.

‘More ale for the lady.’

She let herself be steered towards the corner of the bar, seduced by his use of the magic words, but she could barely get a sip in before Eric found the underside of her skirts. ‘You don’t waste time, do you?’

Eric did not bother to reply. As he took the jug out of her hands and slammed it down somewhere, another girl caught his eye. She was very young, barely out of childhood, her scrawny looks emphasised by the ill-fitting dress that hung from her bony shoulders. Her dark eyes stared at him in a cold detail so beyond her years that, momentarily, Eric thought she was one of his own.

‘Who’s that girl?’ he asked, following the child with his eyes. She swept her frosty gaze over him once and turned regally away, almost as though his right hand under the woman’s skirts and his left hand pulling at her corset were offensive to her.

‘You haven’t met her majesty yet? She’s too posh for us rabble. Is she your kind of patibulary taste?’ his girl said with a sneer.

The child had disappeared across the room, beyond the drunken, dancing gropers. Eric, shaking himself free of her unimpressed gaze, turned his attention to the girl against his chest. She had reached for the ale again.

‘Like’em young, do you?’ she complained, bold from her drinking, narrowing her eyes in a way that reminded Eric eerily of Godric in another time. Godric... he was somewhere in town, with someone who treated him harshly, did not adore him as Eric did—and yet, roused something visceral inside him that Eric could not. Godric in that child’s regal walk. Godric’s precious sensibilities forgotten for a moment of vicious rutting.

‘Do you want to go see if she’s free?’ his woman suggested, grumpy now. 

‘Shut up,’ he cut in, fishing enough money out of his pocket to keep her quiet for a while and shoving it unceremoniously into the top of her corset, between her half-uncovered breasts. Godric in this girl’s dark hair, Godric in her pouty lips, plumped with annoyance. Godric in her testy eyes.

Godric in town, with a partner who gave him what Eric could not.

‘Close your eyes.’

‘I— hey!’ she snapped when Eric spun her around to face the wall and her drink splashed onto the bar.

‘I’ll get you another,’ he grumbled, hiking up her skirts, parting her legs, unbuttoning his trousers.

‘All right, then!’ Her voice slipped up a notch or two as he pushed into her, but Eric paid it no attention. He unlaced the back of her dress. He wanted to assure himself that nothing marred her back, her shoulders. Her arms. Nothing but embedded grime. Her hair was long. It would have looked nice if it had been washed. It fell in knots between his fingers when he loosened it. She was pretty. She smelled all right, he thought, rutting impatiently into her, seeking some release from his thoughts as much as pleasure.

Godric lying on a ratty mattress somewhere, sated and at peace, with the smell of a lover on him, perhaps raising a tender hand to caress the sweaty skin, or closing his fingers on his companion’s body, so much stronger than he looked, to return some of the pain, to start another round. Eric’s blood boiled. He lowered his mouth to the girl’s shoulder and let out an embittered growl, catching her skin between his teeth and squeezing her hips painfully against him. The girl squealed dutifully, professionally, and she did not complain when he turned her to face him, so that he could see her face and not Godric’s. She seemed sweet. She smiled in a way that was nothing like Godric’s. Her hands on him were smaller than Godric’s. Her legs wrapped themselves around him unprompted. She was not Godric. He was glad of it.

Godric wrapping himself, equally unprompted, around a lover. His hands grabbing at bulging muscles, his limpid eyes flashing with every movement, rolling back—Eric’s insides lurched. He pulled back from his woman’s shoulder. She returned his gaze with a trained, proficient teasing smile. She was so different from Godric. She was good fun. He liked her, and he thought he might surprise the smile out of her, so he leaned in and planted a quick smack on her lips. He pulled back expectantly, and she rewarded him with a good-natured laugh. She shifted a bit around his waist and brought her hands around to rest on his buttocks.

‘Now, then.’ She gave him a playful peck on lips and pulled away with a squeeze of his arse. ‘Do it properly, will you?’ she slurred with seasoned provocation.

Eric’s lips tingled, but not from her teasing. He could sense it, crawling out of the recesses of his mind, he could picture it, try as he might to shut it out, he could _feel_ the kiss Godric would be receiving—giving—receiving from his one-night tumble in the town sewers, he could feel the roughness of the mouth, the inept slobbery against his maker’s lips, the lips that Eric felt unworthy of touching, it was there inside him, the stench of stale beer on this man’s breath, the sharpness of the teeth pressing against skin until it broke, the brutal plunge, the clumsy tongue exploring his maker as Eric would not have dared, the forcefulness of the mouth, the hands, the body—

His girl, finding herself ignored, moved one of her hands from Eric’s behind to between his legs for another squeeze. ‘That all you have to give?

—and Godric baring himself to it, welcoming it, taking pleasure from it.

Eric refocused his mind on the girl, on her playful eyes, her pliant legs around him, and he felt himself harden, body and spirit, a tension building painfully inside him that he could not identify, but this time he knew it was his own.

‘Thought there’d be more in you,’ the girl smirked.

But she didn’t get the chance to tease him further. Eric clamped a hand around her chin and his mouth fastened onto hers in a kiss as forceful as the one in his mind. His mouth stayed on hers, crushing her lips, while his hands, momentarily forgotten on her hips, dug into her skirts, hiked them up again, to continue what he had started. He sent her surprised yelp back into her mouth with a thrust, and pressed his mouth harder against her. Her lips split. He sucked on them, drawing her blood into his mouth. He, too, could be rough.

The thought of an arm hooking under Godric’s shoulder, grabbing indifferently at the red ink on him, tangled limbs rolling about, pressing to and fro, looking for dominance, frazzled his brain. He hooked his own arm under his woman’s shoulder, braced his other hand against the wall and pushed into her firmly enough to erase all other feelings, pressed her against the wall and thrust into her so hard and so quick the wooden panels shook. The pressure of his body lifted her mouth from his, and the sounds she made were not of complaint. He rested his head against her chest, grateful now for the cheap perfume that dulled his senses, the coolness of the coins bouncing between her half-clad breasts, and pushed harder against her, into her, into the wall. He would crush Godric out of his mind if he had to rip this woman apart, drain every woman in the room, and half the men with them, and some of the animals if needed.

When he finally got there, he was receiving impressed stares from the few sober souls in the room. All but one.

‘Eric.’


	5. Of yearning and shame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Apologies in advance for the last section of the chapter. I know it's considerably longer than it should be, but Eric couldn't tear himself away, and I couldn't make him. 
> 
> Warning: There is no sexual violence on this chapter, but there is a very protracted description of the marks left by it on Godric's body, so the previous warning applies. Proceed with caution.

_______

‘Eric.’ The whisper was soft. He looked down at the girl pressed against him, thinking for a second that he had unwittingly drained her in full sight of the patrons. With the tip of his tongue, he checked that his fangs had not descended, and he panted for breath. Godric had given him this silly tic. It usually took more than this to tire him out. The whisper, he noted belatedly, came from behind him. ‘Sir.’

He cast a discreet glance around the room as he rearranged himself, propping the worn out woman against the bar. He replaced the drink in her hand, pushed two more coins into her cleavage, turned and forgot all about her. His eyes froze on the dark-eyed child, her haughty, unwavering stare once more settling on him from across the mass of drunkards.

‘Are you Godric’s father?’ she asked, in a murmur so quiet only Eric could possibly have heard it. He gave a fraction of a nod, wondering who this child was, how she knew his name.

The child retreated, looking above her shoulder to make sure he followed through the crowd. He had only just reached her when the most sober arm in the house came between them to demand extra payment if he wanted the child.

‘In advance? Will I have to pin her down for it?’ Eric replied, looking down with undisguised contempt at the oily hag who ran the place; she immediately launched into a tirade about the girl’s sweet, gentle nature, attempting to correct her faux pas and hike the price at the same time. A tiny crinkle of impatience formed on the child’s nose, and Eric glamoured the crone into leaving them alone.

The girl nodded lightly, as though she witnessed glamouring every day. ‘You took a very long time with Mary,’ she chided, unimpressed. ‘You should have been quicker.’

Eric’s absurd impulse, swiftly controlled, was to apologise. This child felt much too old for her years.

‘Are you really his father?’ she asked, her voice quiet but cold, probing.

‘Are you really a girl?’ he muttered.

‘Don’t I look it?’ she countered with a frown. ‘Come. Wait,’ she added at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Is anybody looking?’

Eric shook his head, and the child quietly sidestepped the staircase, leading him down a dank hallway and into a musty room at the back, where Eric presumed the less orthodox acts took place. Perhaps he should tell the child that he had already found all the company he needed tonight.

‘Be quiet,’ she whispered when he tried to say so. Eric obeyed. She didn’t appear to be seducing him. ‘It’s so dark. Ah, there.’

As she spoke, a mournful sigh swept through the room and under Eric’s skin. He leapt to the huddle which he had, at first, mistaken for a bunch of battered old rags. His eyes adjusting swiftly to the darkness, he spotted the bloodied form heaving irregularly, not in breath but in pain. The formerly white shirt, torn open at the front, was roughly the same colour as the dirty floor where he lay.

‘Godric,’ he mumbled disbelievingly.

Godric heaved again upon hearing his voice, and his lips quivered under the bloody froth that covered them. 

‘He didn’t want you here,’ the child said, crouching beside Godric, ‘but I didn’t want him to die alone. You shouldn’t have to die alone if your father’s about.’

‘Die?’ Eric repeated in a daze, taking in the sight little by little, as though his mind could not absorb the enormity of it in one swoop. Godric on the floor, Godric bleeding, his mouth bleeding, his face battered, spat on, dirty finger tracks on his cheeks, blood under his hair, pooling on the frayed collar of his shirt, raw bruises on his arms where they had been clutched against the ground, his wrists purple where they had been held down, his legs naked under a flour sack... ‘No, he’s not dying. He’s healing.’

‘They never heal,’ the child said compassionately, readjusting the ratty flour sack over Godric’s middle section.

Indeed, Godric did not seem to be healing. His eyes fell on Eric for a second, and he looked agonised. Then they rolled back and his lips pursed against a spasm that tore through him so hard his torso arched away from the floor. Eric stilled him with a shaky hand. The girl’s tiny fingers clawed at his wrist.

‘Stop! Don’t you see he’s in pain?’

Eric glared at her. This diminutive being—

‘He’ll heal!’ he snapped, tossing aside the sack to help Godric stand and reeling, in spite of himself, at the state of him, the bloody, grubby gunk that covered him. Eric might do this to his dinner, but seeing it on Godric’s body was... Lurching in Eric’s grip, Godric spluttered. A string of blood ran down his cheek.

‘He’s _dying_ ,’ the child repeated with morbid certainty.

Eric did not have the time or the inclination to discuss the intricacies of their condition with a human child. He had to take Godric home, clean him, feed him. This he could do now. ‘Here,’ he held his wrist to his maker’s bruised lips, shaking him when he did not react. ‘It’ll help you heal...’

‘Stop hurting him!’ The child’s tiny hands clawed at his arm to remove it from Godric’s face. ‘Give him water. I can bring him water.’

Eric stared at her. ‘Water, then.’

As she ran outside to fetch a bucket, Eric bit down on his own wrist and pressed it to Godric’s lips, gently prying them open until a few droplets trickled in. Godric gargled against his skin and his hands quavered fitfully. When the child returned with the water, he convulsed so heavily Eric had to hold him so he would not hit the wall.

‘Why are you not healing?’ Eric stammered in genuine fright. ‘What’s happened to you?’

‘I told him not to go to them. They don’t like boys going with boys,’ the child said mournfully. ‘I told him they’d hurt him. They always do.’

‘What...?’ Eric rasped out.

‘He was sweet,’ she continued, as though Godric were already a corpse. ‘I’d have taken him to my room after, but he was too heavy. Do you think it’ll be over soon?’

Eric glanced wildly at her. Godric thrashed against his arm. Eric could swear there was smoke coming out of his mouth. ‘I need to take you home...’

‘Is it very far away?’

‘No.’ He replied absently, scooping up Godric and wondering if it was best to kill the child before leaving. He did not want to let go of Godric’s body, shivering in his arms, feverish, naked. ‘Where are his—doesn’t matter. I have to—’ He froze when the child’s words belatedly entered his mind. ‘You saw what happened?’

She shook her head. ‘No, seen it before. Not many ways bones can crack.’

‘Do you know who did it?’

She nodded, petting Godric’s arm where it hung in Eric’s grasp.

‘ _Who?_ ’ he demanded, shifting Godric to seize the girl with one hand. She shook in his grip but her countenance remained entirely unfazed.

‘If you hit me, I won’t tell you anything,’ she replied with the complete indifference of those who have nothing left to lose.

‘Little one, look at me,’ he asked softly, switching strategies. ‘You see how they hurt my boy—’

‘Hurry up or he’ll die on the way.’

‘ _He won’t die_ ,’ Eric snapped, squeezing him tightly against his chest. Godric retched. ‘I need to know who it was, little one.’

‘Come back after it’s over and we’ll talk.’ The child locked eyes with him, and this time there was a new glint in her inscrutable gaze.

‘Is it money you want? I have it here.’

‘No,’ she cut in, lowering her eyes before he had a chance to glamour her. ‘Come back after it’s over. I’ll tell you all you want. My window...’ she added, pointing to the one directly above them. ‘Go and ease his pain. He shouldn’t have to die here.’

As if to prove her point, Godric let out a keening, wounded sound, and Eric’s attention returned to him.

‘Tomorrow night,’ he barked over his shoulder, ‘I’ll be at your window.’

The girl gave an inexpert curtsy and watched as he darted out with Godric slumped in his arms.

Eric reached their house in an instant and dwelled for a moment on what to do. _Why was Godric not healing?_

‘I’ll bathe you,’ he thought aloud, inspired by the sight of the moonlight on the river, just beyond the garden, framed by the bars of the back gates. He placed Godric down on the sundried grass where he liked to look at the stars and propped him up to feed him again. ‘You’ll feel better then. Drink...’

As soon as the blood entered his mouth, Godric retched against him and slipped from his grasp, whipping about in an anguish so evident that Eric had the sickening feeling he really might die right then. The ground he knelt on swayed at the thought. Godric curled up and blood spurted thickly from his mouth, wracking his beaten body as it went. Eric crouched beside him as he heaved painfully onto the grass, not daring say a word for fear it might somehow make it worse.

He was so light-headed with dread he did not see it at first, but the need to tear his eyes from Godric’s broken frame directed his gaze to the dark blood on the ground, and he thought he was going mad to see it glinting in the moonlight. Godric’s blood _glinted_. Blinking to clear his blurry sight, he drew closer and looked again. One, two, four, six tiny links of metal shimmering in the pool of his maker’s blood. Seven. Then he understood. Links of polished, treasured heirloom silver.

_‘I’ll fucking kill you! It was my mother’s!’_

_‘Shouldn’t have brought it to the whorehouse, then, should you?’_

Eric felt a fury rearing inside him as he had seldom experienced. He stared at the crushed shavings that mounted in front of his eyes and again he dare not move, but this time fearing what _he_ might do to Godric. He sat, dazed, on his knees, as his rage overcame the terror of the night and Godric heaved and heaved, trembling with the effort and the pain. Eleven. Twelve. A minuscule Virgin Mary cradled her child in the largest chewed up chip, mocking Eric from the pool of Godric’s blood.

Godric clicked his tongue and tumbled onto his side, breathing in stilted gasps. Under the dirt tracks on this face, his skin began to clear itself. His chapped lips moistened. His blackened forearms healed, the scratches under the matted blood faded away. The broken skin on his hips, on his legs, mended.

‘You swallowed silver.’

Even as he said it, Eric could not believe it. It was... bizarre, unthinkable. ‘You swallowed silver,’ he repeated, facing Godric, who was wiping at his face with his hands. ‘And you held it in. So you wouldn’t _heal_.’

He swatted away Godric’s hands, looking him in the eye with mad hope that he had misinterpreted the whole affair. Godric looked away, still panting from the strain, and Eric thought _he_ might vomit now.

He stood and paced about Godric, quashing the silver under his boots for want of anything else he could crush, and there was silence. Godric spat sideways onto the grass, quivering, with his eyes shut. He did not move when Eric sat beside him to examine his healed skin. But his eyes did open when Eric hauled him up against his chest with a fury in his glare and a power in his grip that would have had anyone else begging for their lives.

 _Why are you so miserable again?_ The question roared in him, corroding his insides like vitriol. _We hunted together the other night, we shared our spoils, we laughed and reminisced, and made plans. What are you miserable about now?_ But he clamped his mouth shut before the rant came out, for he knew his fraying temper would need no further incitement.

The big house had been Godric’s choice, not for its size but for where it stood by the river bend. He wanted the bustle of modernity but also the greenery, the sound of water. Finally, Eric thought through the haze of his anger, a purpose for all that ridiculous detail. He looked down at Godric’s arms, the sleeves creasing in his clasp, the caked dirt rubbing onto his hands, and considered tossing him into the water unceremoniously – he was a grown man, he could wash himself – and heading right back to the brothel, not into the child’s room, but back to the bar, and to his smirking, pliant blue-eyed girl.

With a final retch, Godric sagged miserably against him. His head bounced, and only then did Eric realise the tension in his grip was making Godric shake. He stilled his hands. Body gone limp in Eric’s grasp, Godric looked up, vacant, not himself.

No, he’d choose someone with a different eye colour this time.

His temper boiling over at last, Eric shut his eyes firmly to that empty gaze. His lips pressed together of their own volition, his muscles flexed until he could feel his clothes straining at the seams. He thought of the agony Godric had made him share, the incessant bleeding, and he very nearly threw Godric into the river right then. Better yet, he would send him rolling along the grass, against the gates, give him a final kick down the wide steps that led to the house’s private barges and watch as he splashed into the water. Tomorrow he would take whatever punishment Godric would care to dole out. It couldn’t be harder to bear than this.

His grip tightened like a vice, digging almost to the bone. Godric didn’t shove him off, didn’t kill him for it. He hung motionless, indifferent. Eric could feel the anger uncoiling in his throat and pushing past his lips in a pained, raspy wheeze, and one of his hands freed itself only to wrap, claw-like, around Godric’s neck. Godric’s chin tilted back under the pressure, and his throat worked under Eric’s fingers in what would have been a gasp if the angle allowed it.

Godric’s hands came up between their chests. One of them reached up to Eric’s lips, feeling the vibration of the wheeze that still carried. The fingers were dirty, they smelled of that crowd, they brought the image of Godric, helpless and wounded, to his mind. They dropped from Eric’s lips and lay, lifeless, on the nape of his neck.

Godric did not shift from that awkward angle until Eric’s hand uncurled from his neck and grasped the back of his head to bring their foreheads together. Now it was Eric who panted, unsure whether to hold in or let out all that bubbled up inside him. In a supreme effort, he forced himself to face Godric’s gaze from up close, bracing himself for whatever emptiness he was going to find.

The eyes that met his were no longer wide, nor vacant. But they were wretched, and they flickered and lowered themselves almost instantly, leaving Eric to look down at the picture they made on the grass, Godric injured, half-naked, sticking to his lap with a sordid wetness that made Eric want to tear off his own skin, and him, shaking his maker, throttling him, his maker who could not face him for the shame.

He fought with himself for a good while, but Godric was ashamed, and he could not bear it. Sickened by his own weakness, it was with a careful delicacy that he loosened his grip and shifted so that he could peel the tattered remains of Godric’s shirt off him, the one item of his clothing that had survived the evening. It clung to Godric’s skin in a fetid mess, and Eric wanted nothing but to rip it off, burn it, pulverise it. It caught on Godric’s shoulder, he pulled at it harder, and Godric’s head hung lower. Eric clenched and unclenched his fists, and made himself slow down, slide his hands down the fabric until he could find the loose spots where he could pull on it with a tenderness he didn’t want to feel.

Once that unholy rag was off Godric’s body, Eric scooped him up and walked along the garden, through the back gates, onto the marble steps to the river.

Depositing Godric on the lower step, where he lay inert, Eric considered how to do this. Then he lowered himself into the water and scooped handful after handful of water over the grime on Godric’s feet. He rubbed at the crusted dirt that encircled Godric’s ankles, thinking of how it had been laid there, how rough it would have been, and how unclean the people doing it. Then his legs, his knees, around which there were more tracks, more sweat-encrusted trails where arms, legs, hands would have hooked for leverage, against Godric’s will, _obeying Godric’s will_ , and Eric could barely continue for the bile that rose inside him.

He had to, though. He looked at the length of Godric’s body, so awkwardly angled on the step, with his legs over the edge, just breaching the water. Godric did not seem bothered by his own nudity, he had not shifted since being placed down, but he had covered his face with his arm. He would want to be clean after this.

Gingerly, he lowered more and more of Godric into the water, reaching above his knees to remove the layers of dirt that thickened the further up he moved. Eric felt his hands begin to falter. His palms stilled on Godric’s thighs and refused to move further. He had to force his fingers up the skin, painfully, leaving marks of his own. To his shame, his hands started to tremble. He didn’t want to touch Godric so wantonly, had never wanted it. Had he? No.

Hadn’t he, though?

No, no, never. The idea awoke something in him that was appalling, unspeakable. His own bits he was proud to strut and parade, but Godric’s were not his to touch. Dare he, even now, run his hands over the skin, the flesh, in an intimacy that wasn’t his to share? His recalcitrant hand dug into Godric’s thigh, not far below the hipbone, resisting the thoughts, the... desires...? rearing a tentative, poisonous head in his mind. No. _No._ This belonged to Godric, to his companions. But tonight, he reminded himself, it had belonged to someone else, someone who had besmirched it, and his maker was here, in his arms—almost in his arms—bearing the marks of it, first having sought it and now covering his face from it.

Unable to stop the thoughts that seared him, that sullied him to the bone, Eric once again forced his hands to be gentle, and he pulled Godric a bit further into the water. They were upriver here, and the water was still clear at this time of night. It gleamed, bright as silver, as Eric spooned it over Godric’s skin, painstakingly cleaning it of the sweat and the grime that he had imagined Godric allowing out of pleasure. The dirt, the blood and the piss, the awfulness that had been inflicted on the sacrosanct body of his maker. He couldn’t avert his eyes as his newly shaking hands rubbed it all off, not if he wanted Godric to be clean. He tried to avert his mind, but something had started to fester inside him, and every movement sliced into him, stripping him, layer by layer, of a decency he didn’t know had been there.

Godric had made no movement, shown no reaction. Steadying himself and holding a breath he didn’t need, Eric pulled him closer still, into the water almost to the waist, and commanded his shamed hands to move along the skin, around and into the abused flesh, gentle at first, then harder when the pasty, bloody gunk would not come off. The body in his hands didn’t move but, out of the corner of his eye, Eric could see Godric’s arms tightening over his face. He spared a moment to think of the slow, excruciating ways he would put an end to the miserable lives of every—single—person—who had touched Godric tonight.

Sullied in his body by the filth that clung to his hands, and in his mind by that degrading, hungry ache, Eric did not feel that he was much better than them.

He had reached Godric’s upper body at last, and a cloud of opaque water grew around them as, inch by inch, Eric removed the vestiges of the night, the reek of others. Turning him around so he could reach his back, Eric hooked an arm across Godric’s chest and moved into a neater spot. There he pressed his free palm to Godric’s back, wiping it gently, mindful of the ink that he had pictured another touching in welcome excitement. Eric’s fingertips lingered on the brand, scrubbing at the tracks left there by a sweaty hand, still smelling of beer and piss. He had pictured that hand dragging up Godric’s back out of ecstasy, a shared heat that Eric had envied. His mind flashed back to Godric, frightened and wide-eyed on his bed, letting him kiss that repulsive brand. Others would have kissed that brand before tonight, they would have been permitted to grab it, scratch it, rub against it in genuine pleasure. And Godric would have enjoyed it. The unthinkable roared in his veins again.

Godric’s head lolled onto his arm, reminding Eric that he was not finished. But he could not face Godric now, not now. He reached around to cradle Godric’s face, to feel the filth on it, and he steeled himself. His hand felt stiff, unwilling, but he wet it and, butterfly-soft, ran it along Godric’s features, again and again, over every crease, every swell, the ridges of Godric’s tightly-shut eyes, his ears, his jaw. The sticky mess around the lips would not fade, and Eric tasted his own blood, biting down on his tongue, as he pressed harder, rubbed harder, until his fingers could feel skin as pristine as Godric always wanted it to be. 

Tomorrow, he decided, after he dealt with the child but before he devoted the night to a protracted bloodbath, he would walk into the bar and find a man. A big man whose hips he couldn’t encircle as easily as Godric’s, a sturdy man with shoulders that met the span of his, whom he could trick into thinking they matched in strength, and he would erase these thoughts that disorientated him, that he _refused_ to have, that disgraced him so. He would play with his prey. He would drink, long and hard, and remind himself of the taste of pleasure. And he would find the strength and the clarity of mind to be angry at Godric again.

Lost in thought, it took him a while to notice the new trickle of blood dripping onto his arm and mixing into the water.

For a moment, he merely tightened his hold. Then, as the blood still trickled, marking their spot in the water in a spidery trail, he could not bear it. He had to shift, had to let Godric face him, face away from the world that displeased him so much. He would be angry later, at home. Tomorrow—tomorrow, he would be angry. Tonight, Godric’s tears fell into the nape of his neck, and he could not turn his maker away.

Godric made not a sound, not a move as he wept. He wept clandestine tears, like one who had never been at freedom to shed them. Eric’s forgotten hand lifted, soft and unsure, to shield that cheek. Godric’s chest rose in a great heave, and the lips against Eric’s neck parted. He half-expected, hoped, to feel fangs, and he steeled himself for it, bared himself to it. Instead, the lips stretched in a grimace, pressed against him, and a breath came out in a tortured, silent lament. Deep inside Eric, something churned.

Shutting his eyes because he could not bear the sight of his own weakness, Eric lowered his head, grazing Godric’s features with his. He lifted that grimacing mouth from his neck, lowered his forehead to Godric’s, pressed them together to share whatever comfort he could provide, felt the bloody tears pooling around his fingers. He let out a warm breath over the skin, one of the quirks Godric appreciated, then he remembered his own lips were still dirty from Godric’s earlier touch, and he released Godric’s face so he could scrub his mouth raw. Then he returned his hand to Godric’s cheek, he adjusted his temple to Godric’s, and he waited, in the gently swaying water, for a reaction. None came. 

And he loathed himself. He did. But still he felt his hand slither down from Godric’s face, along the neck and over the shoulder, to grasp the limp arm and heave it over his own shoulder, around his neck. He did the same with the other arm, hoping for a response, any response, but he could only feel the wrenching misery inside his maker, the blood still trickling down the nape of his neck, and he despised himself for having done it.

Swaying in that empty embrace, Eric opened his eyes, for all of his dignity was surely gone now. The sight of Godric’s shoulders starting to sag into that blankness, the feel of the tears beginning to dry on his skin, snapped something inside him. Bringing his quavering hand to Godric’s face again, he cradled it, fingertips splayed softly on the skin. Godric’s eyes flickered and he faced away again, drawn to his vacant world. Eric’s hand pressed harder, guilty but not hesitant, bringing Godric’s face back against his.

Eric’s lips were still warm from the girl’s blood, earlier in the evening, so long ago now. Begging forgiveness with his eyes, for he would not be asking permission with his mouth, he lowered his warm lips to Godric’s in the barest of brushes. There was no reaction. He touched their lips together again, again, once more, almost chaste in his softness. At another time if would have been playful. He grazed one corner of Godric’s mouth. He laid a warm breath, a gentle pressure, on the other corner. He stroked the upper lip, pressed their mouths fully together in a soft kiss. His tongue came out, ashamed, and flashed between Godric’s lips, so he could feel the heat and perhaps want some of it. He didn’t.

Overwhelmed in equal measure by the limp form in his arms and the storm that raged inside him, feeling unmanned, dishonoured even by his lights, Eric lowered his mouth to Godric’s again. His customary reverence should have come to his rescue, but it didn’t. His mouth would not lift from Godric’s. As he drew on all that he had to tear himself away, he felt, in mounting horror, Godric’s bottom lip caught in his. This was not what he had meant to do at all. He lowered his mouth again, his strength failed him, and there it lingered again. He felt unclean.

Forcing himself to focus on his overwhelming repugnance for himself, but too weak to stop his shamed lips from pressing against Godric’s just once more, he dragged his mouth down to Godric’s chin, up his face to his forehead, his temples, his eyelids that closed at Eric’s touch. The arms that hung around his shoulders tightened minutely, barely at all, and it reminded Eric of his purpose, of why he was there. Desolate but grateful, he felt the roaring blaze inside him dampen before the sorrow. There was fresh blood trickling down his skin. Overcome, with a gentleness that he had never shown before, and never would again, he pressed a kiss, heated and contrite and full of yearning, to Godric’s reddened cheek, and let it linger for as long as Godric would have it.

‘Why do you kiss me?’ Godric asked in a wretched whisper, his first words to Eric tonight. 

‘It’s always made you smile.’

The spidery trail of blood danced on the water for a long time after.


	6. Interlude

It was very late, but the child was awake. Hovering outside the rotting wood of her window, he could see her kneeling on the bare floor in quiet prayer. What she still had to pray for, Eric could not imagine, but he supposed everyone had their whims.

She raised her eyes when he rapped his knuckles on the window and went over to let him in. ‘Good evening, sir.’ There was a measure of respect in her voice now that Godric wasn’t here. 

She curtsied as he clambered through the small opening, watching with her unwavering gaze. He wondered what Godric could have told her that a wingless man floating outside her window did not frighten her. If anything, she looked approving.

‘Is it over?’ she asked. ‘I prayed for him.’

‘He’s b—better.’

She caught the hesitation and looked doubtful. ‘He must be very strong,’ she mused. ‘He didn’t look strong.’

‘He’s been unwell.’ Eric bristled. Why he felt the need to defend Godric’s honour before her, he did not know.

‘He’s very sweet.’

Eric thought of the night before, when they were back indoors and he had remembered that he was so, so angry. And Godric, sensing it in him, had found his strength and latched onto him like a force of nature, asking Eric to let him drink, the first time in Eric’s existence that Godric had requested permission. And also the first time in his existence when Eric had considered saying no. Not to make a petty point, but because the unspeakable still festered inside him, his limbs had given into that fevered embrace with an ease that had little to do with comfort, and he had felt himself teetering on the edge of something that he didn’t quite understand, but he was sure would destroy him. He did not want Godric to see it, guess at it. But Godric asked again, in a muffled murmur from where his fangs rested, hungry, on Eric’s neck, easing his grip to run a hand along the other side of Eric’s neck, the back of his head, his face. Caught between the pressure of those fangs, the feel of that hand, the blood that hummed under the skin, the pleading—the pleading—in that voice, he heard himself say, ‘Yes.’

Godric had lifted his head from Eric’s flesh only to say, ‘Now you drink from me,’ with steel in his voice, and Eric did want to say no to that, he was too angry, too tired, too scared of himself. But to his shame, his fangs unsheathed themselves instantly, and Godric, looking triumphant, pushed himself against them with a ferocity beyond even the old days, and Eric had been lost, lost...

None of it had been sweet. 

‘He was so sad, though,’ she was saying. ‘I couldn’t make him laugh once.’

‘You—spent time together?’ Eric lifted his eyes from the corner, where a wisp of cork on a stick lay tied with a rag, only vaguely resembling a doll.

‘He said I’m brave,’ she added confidentially. ‘No one’s ever said that before.’

‘When was that?’

‘Before he got hurt, sir.’ She looked at him as though he were dim. ‘I liked him. I wish he hadn’t got into trouble.’ She hesitated, then added, quietly, ‘Will he be back?’

Eric shook his head, and she did not look surprised.

‘What else did he say?’ he asked, momentarily forgetting his purpose there. Godric confiding in a human—a human child. What an absurd thought. But he had told her Eric’s name, they had spoken about Eric...

‘He didn’t talk much,’ the child replied with a shrug, looking away for once. Eric was sure he was lying. ‘He listened, though. It was nice.’

She told him about feeling so sorry for that boy wandering outside, pale and alone, that she had invited him to share her soup. He had refused the soup but accepted the company, and they had sat together—he had wanted to know about her, no one ever did, and he was so sweet and he did not try to reach under her skirts, so she had told him all. About her dead parents, and about her brothers and sisters, dying or leaving, one by one, not long after, and leaving her alone. He had nodded knowingly when she said the days were too long and the nights even longer. And he had told her she was brave, and that he understood. She did not know what he understood, but he had smiled at her, and she had almost fallen asleep looking in his eyes. It had been nice.

Then it was late, people had come, he had looked at one of the men, the man had leered at him, and he had left her. She had refused to entertain all night, because she knew how it would end, she had seen it before, and she did not want the nice boy to die alone.

‘He could have come here with me instead. I told him it was all right that he didn’t have any money. I wouldn’t have charged him,’ she concluded, looking down at her lap.

The child’s room was roughly the size of Eric’s bed, and he had the distinct feeling she would only have one for as long as she was the house’s prized jewel. It would not last long—the extreme youth that set her apart from the other girls would fade soon, and she had not been gifted with great beauty.

‘Where do I find them?’ Eric interrupted, suddenly reminded of his purpose.

‘What will you do to them?’ She had that peculiar glint in her eye again.

‘Kill them all,’ he said without a trace of hesitation. ‘And you _will_ tell me, or I’ll walk into every house and gut _everyone_ , guilty or not, and you will have that on your conscience, and you will be praying it away for the rest of your life.’

She didn’t look concerned. Rather, she looked marvelled, childlike, as though he were telling her a fairy tale. ‘All of them?’

‘Yes.’

She considered this for a long moment. ‘He did say you were so strong.’

‘He told you about me.’

‘Only a bit.’ She lowered that formidable gaze.

‘What else did he say?’

‘Nothing.’ She looked even younger in her discomfort. Eric crouched beside her and her arm reached up to shield her head.

‘I’m not going to hurt you, little one.’ he requested, making his voice as soft as it would go, soft enough for her to look at him again. ‘Tell me what he said.’

‘Just that you were kind,’ she mumbled without looking up.

Kind.

There was a moment of silence while Eric weighed his options. She wouldn’t raise her eyes, so he couldn’t glamour her, and there was something indecent about striking someone Godric had been fond of.

Ultimately, he decided, he might as well take the long way around. ‘What is it you want, child?’

After a pause, she said, hesitantly, ‘Will you really do what I ask, if I tell you their names?’

‘I don’t know what it is yet.’

She told him, and a newfound respect for this fleck of a person glimmered inside Eric.

‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’ he asked, curious in spite of himself. ‘You have a window.’

‘It’s a great sin,’ she mumbled.

Ah, of course. ‘But not if I do it?’

‘It’s not wrong when angels do it, is it?’ she asked, flustered but still looking at her lap, where her hands now fidgeted with the creases on her skirt. ‘You’re an angel, you can do it.’

The absurdity of the statement would have had him in gales of laughter if it weren’t for the echoes it brought of a difficult night, long ago. ‘Where did you get that from?’

She clamped her lips shut and grabbed her skirts more tightly.

‘What else did he tell you?’ he insisted, his voice growing cooler with every word, and she winced. All at once, she was just a child.

‘Just that.’

Eric steadied himself, shifted so he could face her, and laid a reassuring hand on her shivering ones. She didn’t flinch at his cold touch. She must have felt worse before.

‘Look at me, little one.’

‘I don’t remember anything else.’

Eric leaned closer to her, lowering his voice, making it soft as a lullaby. ‘It’s all right, child. Shh. Tell me who those people are, then, and where I can find them.’ Her hands stilled under his. ‘And I will do what you ask of me.’

Her breath caught. ‘Will you really?’

‘Yes,’ he drawled, warm, hypnotic. ‘Tell me, and you will see your parents before the end of tonight.’

‘I do miss them so,’ she said, with the first note of joy he had heard from her. ‘I do so want to be with them.’

‘I will help you,’ he promised, lifting her chin with a gentle finger. She raised her eyes to his. ‘But first...’

She sucked in a breath and tried to shy away, but their eyes were already locked.

‘Tell me all that Godric said to you.’ Eric’s voice seeped into the child’s mind, taking her will away. ‘Every word of it.’

So she did. 

Not long after, she lay on the rickety floor as Eric kept his word and drained her life away – the bed was unmade, it smelled of recent activity, and she had not wanted to lie in it – and she tried to speak again. ‘Sir...!’

Oh no, child, it’s too late now, he thought, sinking in more deeply, drinking faster, to end her agony sooner. She had given him what he wanted. He might as well give her some dignity.

‘Please, sir... would you...’ the gasp raked his ear, afflictive, suddenly terrified. ‘Please, sir, please... shut my eyes before—you leave—‘

The last of that request was the sigh of the departed. Eric retracted his fangs, freed himself from the tiny hands closed into claws on his shirt, and watched as her head fell back against his hand.

-x-

The rest of the night had been devoted to wrenching every ounce of life from every one of the vermin the girl had singled out to him, and a few more he remembered seeing there, watching and laughing.

Not long after sunrise, Eric was still wide awake in his room, cleansing himself of the child’s words in the most effective way he knew, via the pliant – glamoured – body of a young maiden who would have been married that weekend if Eric hadn’t laid eyes on her. She had had the misfortune of making an early trip to the church, just as the morning light arrived, and Eric, heading home in a fog of overpowering rage, had seen her, and taken her. Her handsome groom-to-be as well, as they had been walking together. Their guardians lay in the alley by the church with their heads smashed in – Eric had had other priorities – and the couple were currently wrapped around Eric, receiving all his anger and frustration with gasps and moans that would have put the girls in the brothel to shame. Well, the infatuated groom’s head was currently between Eric’s legs, and sounds were a difficult proposition just then, but he was showing his enthusiasm in different ways.

When he felt a presence outside his door – Godric unable to sleep again – Eric gritted his teeth, pushed harder into the man, made the woman scream louder, and shifted so he could have them all around him, covering every bit of him, shielding him from his own instincts. He almost wished Godric would come in to see them and know that the breasts against Eric’s head and the cock against his side had, for once, taken precedence.

The presence lingered outside, doubtlessly listening – it would have been impossible not to – to the sounds for pleasure, the bumping wood, the rustling of the sheets, the moaning and the begging, and the screaming. Eric took perverse satisfaction in ensuring, every now and then, that his own voice was louder, his breath more hitched and his sighs longer than he ever would have made them. After some time, Godric left.

-x-

The child was buried the following day, alongside the several sons and daughters Death had taken in the town’s darkest night. What the Devil had done to the others was too appalling to behold, and they were lined up in tightly-shut boxes, but she lay at the centre, regal in her outdated dress. She looked, in death, like the innocent she had not been allowed to be in life. Her dark, accusing eyes were closed.


	7. Maker and child

‘Why won’t I have a coffin, then?’

‘They’re small, uncomfortable and impractical.’

Pam crossed her arms and Eric, looking up from his armchair, had to hold back a smile. So outspoken, so stubborn, so _hungry_. His child. _He had a child_. Someone who craved life as much as he did. Her eyes had settled on him, burning with excitement, and even from across the foggy bridge it was clear that she was different. That she deserved more than the tiny window of life she was destined to have. 

‘So we can’t turn into animals?’

‘No.’

‘And we have to be _invited in_.’

‘Yes.’

‘And we sleep in _beds_.’

‘Coffins attract maggots.’

‘It’s as dull as being human, then—’ Pam trailed off, looking over Eric’s shoulder as Godric walked down the stairs. She gave the curtest of nods, assuring herself Eric saw her do it, and finished, ‘only it’s eternal.’

It pained Eric that his maker and his child had taken such an immediate dislike to each other. After a few hours of Eric at his tallest, strongest and most confident, Pam had found this boy with his self-pitying eyes a disappointment. He looked like an eternal version of her little brother, daft and spoilt, heir to the estate and the family name in spite of his consummate incompetence. He had aggravated her instantly.

Godric, in turn, had dignified her with a single perfunctory glance before asking Eric to repeat her name.

‘Is he simple?’ Pam had asked at that.

That was not the right reaction to Godric’s haloed presence, and that particular lesson Eric was quick to teach her. Alone in her coffin-less room, still coming out of that wave of fear, Pam had swiftly decided she never wanted to anger Eric again, so now she made a point of being polite. She nodded again for good measure, although it irritated her to see Eric’s good spirits vanishing the moment his maker had come into view.

A really rather long moment followed, with her looking at Eric, Eric looking over his shoulder at Godric and Godric looking dispassionately at them both. It was boring. ‘I’m hungry,’ she complained.

‘There’s a gift in your room. Don’t drain her all in one go, it can taste very bitter.’

‘Can I try the glam—glamour—’

He shrugged. ‘She’s yours, do as you please.’

Quietly reshuffling her thoughts on vampires who slept on beds, Pam all but rushed up the stairs, pausing only to curtsy very deeply for Godric and raise her brow very slightly for Eric. In return, Godric tilted his head in something resembling the beginnings of a bow. It was all very polite.

‘Your child—’

‘She won’t be impertinent towards you again,’ Eric rushed to reassure him, though he was a bit offended on her behalf. Yes, she was a bit inconvenient, but she was only a day old.

‘—is very spirited.’ Godric finished, without feeling.

‘You don’t like her.’

‘I wouldn’t think my feelings matter. You didn’t turn her for me.’

‘I’d like you to be fond of each other,’ Eric said sincerely. He adored her. It was just as intense as his bond with Godric, but it was easier to tell himself apart from her and, in some ways, it was more enjoyable that way. It was such an alien emotion, after the maelstrom that his bond with Godric wrought on him.

‘We might,’ Godric agreed unenthusiastically, heading for the door. ‘Eventually.’

‘Are you going out?’ Eric asked. ‘I’ll come along.’

‘No.’

‘Another of your solitary strolls?’ Eric countered, a familiar frustration welling up inside him.

‘Yes.’ Godric had reached the door.

‘And which putrid hole will I fish you out of this time?’

Godric froze with his hand on the doorknob.

‘I mean,’ Eric continued, settling back into the armchair with an ease entirely at odds with the way he felt. ‘You could at least let me know in advance, spare me the trouble.’

Ever so slowly, barely turning his head, Godric shot him a glance out of the corner of his eye. ‘You haven’t forgiven me.’

Eric shrugged. ‘It’s not my place to forgive you.’

‘Then,’ Godric replied, with a stillness in his voice that boded nothing good, ‘I think we’re done here.’

‘Yes, perhaps.’

Godric had made to move, but something in Eric’s tone stopped him again.

‘What was it?’ Eric asked airily, as if thinking out loud. _‘Like a storm blowing through your window and carrying you away with it, unable to resist.’_

Almost imperceptibly, Godric’s shoulders sagged.

‘You spoke to the girl.’

‘ _He weakens me._ _I feel lowly_ ,’ Eric continued. ‘Who would want to be near that?’

‘You shouldn’t have.’ Godric’s hand dropped from the doorknob, and he turned around at last. ‘Poor child.’

‘I can assure you she got exactly what she wanted from me,’ Eric replied, frost entering his voice. ‘Contrary to you, it seems.’

The air grew heavy as Godric turned a hardened gaze on him, but Eric ignored it. This was an impossible situation, and he was weary. The sheer strength of his bond with Pam after _one day_ only emphasised the frailty of his connection with his maker. The feeling was almost unbearable.

‘ _I can’t laugh as he does, and it makes him angry.’_

‘Don’t talk of things you don’t understand,’ Godric warned, and his tone was deadly.

‘Perhaps you could do me the very great kindness of helping me understand.’

‘ _I am not kind,’_ Godric snarled, showing a flash of temper for the first time in a long while.

‘No,’ Eric agreed, twisting his lips into the sweetest smile. ‘I’m told that _I_ am, though. And... what was it again... ah, yes. _It reduces you to the worst in you. It—’_

‘You are a fool,’ Godric cut in icily.

‘I must be,’ Eric agreed in the same tone. ‘I never realised how it must _—_ ’

‘Your observation skills were never your greatest asset.’

With a supreme effort, Eric somehow managed to swallow the retort that burned to come out. Words still crowded at his throat though, so many words, and some were stronger than him. ‘ _He can be so overwhelming. He crushes my will.’_

Godric’s lip curled.

‘It’s certainly interesting to hear, after almost a thousand years devoted to your needs—’

‘You couldn’t possibly begin to understand my needs,’ Godric snapped.

‘Clearly.’

They glared at each other for a long moment. Godric looked like he was about to say – do? – something, then changed his mind at the last second.

‘This is quite the tantrum, Eric, and I am impatient tonight. We can talk when I return.’

‘No,’ Eric said, shifting to assume a more formal posture. ‘I think you’re right. Perhaps we _are_ done here. I think I’ll go.’

Godric quirked an eyebrow at him and, when Eric didn’t move further, his voice came out in a hiss. ‘ _Who—is—stopping—you_? Have fun. You look like you need it. Good night.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Eric clarified professionally, just as Godric was turning again. ‘I think maybe Pam and I should go.’

Godric spun around sharply.

‘My child hasn’t travelled. I would like to show her a bit more of the world, as my maker did with me.’ Eric shrugged. ‘She can’t be holed up in here for all eternity _—_ ’

‘Eric...’

‘ _—_ or until you decide that you fancy a change of airs. I’m a maker now. I must put her needs first. As I have done – all my existence – with yours. However overwhelming I was.’

Godric approached, incredulity writ large in his face and in his voice. ‘You would _leave_ me? Because I want to _go for a_ _walk_ alone?’

‘No. Because you don’t want to come back.’

Godric, for once, seemed lost for words.

_‘Every look of his takes something from me.’_ Eric stared him directly in the eye, trying to keep his voice even.

‘I told her that I was _grateful,’_ Godric muttered angrily, ‘for your kindness.’

Eric winced. He was developing quite a dislike of that word. ‘Yes, and that it reduced you to the worst in you.’

Godric grabbed the armchair, on either side of Eric, and growled right in his face, _‘What do you want from me?’_

‘An attitude,’ Eric said, cringing at the bitterness in the words. ‘I would have liked to understand you, but you wouldn’t let me. I tried to help you, but you seem to resent me for it. I _want_ you to stay, but you obviously won’t. Surely we’ve run our course? Maybe if we meet again, in a few decades, a century or so, things will be different?’

‘There is nowhere in this world, or any other, where I won’t find you,’ Godric promised, so close that his breath brushed Eric’s face.

‘Will you want to, though?’

Godric seemed genuinely thrown, but he didn’t retreat an inch.

‘I don’t want to part in anger, Godric. I don’t want to part at all.’ Eric sighed. ‘But neither will I beg. You don’t take any pleasure from my company. No excitement, no companionship. I thought at least I gave you some comfort in whatever this darkness is that follows you around, but it turns out _my devotion makes you feel lowly_.’

‘I cannot be the infallible god of your imagination,’ Godric ground out. ‘I’m mad, and fallible, and wrong, and I will disappoint you on occasion.’

‘Let the last of the gods fall, then,’ Eric said flatly, moving to stand. Godric laid a fingertip on his neck and pushed him back down.

‘No. Stay.’

Eric rolled his shoulders, suddenly tired of the conversation. ‘I won’t go looking for you in the gutters, Godric. I can’t—I _refuse_ to carry you in half-dead again.’

‘I am not asking you to,’ Godric whispered, and the atmosphere shifted without either of them moving.

‘You will let yourself be battered, and abused, and left to cough up your innards in pools of blood, then?’ Reluctantly, almost against his will, Eric raised a hand to Godric’s cheek, to frame the sad smile which was beginning to form on that boyish face, and which set all his instincts on edge. ‘I won’t be witness to that either.’

‘Don’t be, then.’ Godric’s voice had dropped to a melodious whisper, and he had slipped away from Eric’s touch to breathe onto his neck. Eric’s blood essayed a shamed dance in his veins.

‘Would you have had me be more like them?’ Eric asked, trying not to surrender. ‘Mistreat you rather than embrace you? I have considered it, you know.’

Godric raised his head, and he seemed genuinely amused by the idea.

‘I can be contemptuous,’ Eric argued. A feather-light touch traced his features as he spoke, and Godric let out a sigh which was almost light-hearted. ‘I can muster up spite, and anger, and I could have given you all the violence you seek in others, if that would have eased your darkness.’

‘You could not raise a finger to me without apologising profusely in advance and flagellating yourself copiously afterwards. And that’s not what I seek anyway,’ he said, lowering his head to Eric’s neck again. ‘My silly Viking...’

It should have been an insult, Eric thought, but somehow it sounded endearing instead. There were fangs grazing his shirt now, and a hand cradling his head, and a gentle embrace, and he had to strain to hear Godric’s next words.

‘I can’t be better than I am, Eric.’

He meant to say something cold and cutting, he really did. But, all at once, Godric’s body lowered itself onto him, the hand at the back of his head tightened its grip, and the teasing fangs plunged into the hollow of his throat, through the fabric of his shirt, hard and fiery enough to snap him out of that lull, and into a pit which he was trying with all his might to keep sealed. They withdrew almost instantly, leaving him unmoored and, embarrassingly, quaking with need. His hands had somehow found themselves on Godric’s thigh, on his back, and his own fangs had descended without him noticing.

‘See?’ Godric murmured from the nape of his neck, ‘you don’t want to leave me.’

‘No,’ Eric conceded, leaning into the touch, feeling his blood roar for its maker. But a high-pitched scream upstairs reached him through the haze that had engulfed him, and that woke him up. ‘I must, though. I have a child.’

Godric let out a heavy sigh against the nape of his neck.

‘I must teach her, help her. I must keep myself sane. For her, and for myself.’ In a small voice that wasn’t half as firm as he wished it to be, he added, ‘I want to enjoy my life.’

Godric lifted his head to face him head-on. There was still a hint of blood on his fangs. One of his hands traced the side of Eric’s face, ever so softly, contrasting sharply with his other hand, which tangled in Eric’s hair and pulled hard on it. A dark, hungry fire had lit up in Godric’s eyes, and it wouldn’t let Eric look away.

‘I won’t have you hate me.’ Godric said, peremptory as in the old days.

‘I could never—’ Eric argued, feeling the seal on that pit slide off, and his resolve falling into it.

‘You are my angel,’ Godric cut in, gentle again. Eric flinched at the word. Their faces were almost flush, Godric’s eyes bore straight into his. ‘You bring me joy, and beauty. I need your beauty in my darkness.’

The voice was a murmur again, blowing into his neck, warm and soothing, and Eric leaned towards it. His hand still hadn’t left Godric’s back.

‘I will learn to love your child,’ the murmur said. Godric’s hands wormed their way around him, behind him, embracing him tightly, blocking out the air. Eric felt his whole body coil under the touch.

‘...and I will keep my darkness from you.’

‘That’s not what I _—_ ‘

‘Shhh.’

‘I don’t want—’

‘Oh, be quiet,’ Godric’s voice crawled up his neck, soft and silky, along his jaw, behind his ear. His fangs barely ruffled the skin there, drawing the full attention of Eric’s blood to them again. Eric struggled to remember what they had been talking about, and he tried to speak, but that voice was spiralling down his neck again, ‘Be quiet,’ and the fangs grazed just a little bit deeper with every word. ‘Be quiet, be quiet.’

He had the vaguest recollection of saying something, actually getting the words out, and Godric waving them away somehow, but his mind grew foggier every time he blinked, and he...

He could only curse himself, Eric thought dimly, his relentless weakness, his inability to think whenever Godric reminded them of their bond— _Godric’s palm was cradling his cheek_ —He had another bond now, with Pam, and he wanted to be worthy of it— _Godric so perfectly cocooned on his lap_ —he couldn’t forget her, she needed her maker— _at what point had Godric’s hand reached under his shirt?_ —and he, he wanted his excitement back— _Godric was saying things, and Eric couldn’t understand him, Godric’s mouth was close, and his hand on Eric’s skin_ —I would like to part without anger, Godric. I need to carve out a new path for myself and my child— _Godric’s eyes blazed, his grip pinned Eric down, as weak as_ —they were on the floor now, and Eric couldn’t let himself be manipulated like this— _Godric was so strong, but so helpless_ _, he was afraid, Eric should hold him._ No! He had to honour the Viking in him and not bend—

‘It’s true though, Eric. You _do_ reduce me to the worst in me.’

Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he realised what was happening and he thrashed against it, against the grip of his maker, he tried to rise, but Godric weighed down on him like silver, he was _still_ saying things— _Godric’s eyes were so sad, and he melted into Eric’s arms so readily, too readily and, oh-so-shamefully, Eric melted into his_ —

‘I’m sorry, Eric.’

Some sharp piece of furniture poked Eric’s back, he squirmed away but Godric still pinned him down— _Why are you sad, Godric?_ —His fangs still rested on Eric’s throat, and when he tried to speak up they moved to his mouth, and then they were sharing blood and he couldn’t think, he was lost, he was lost.

‘Don’t hate me.’

‘I—’

Godric was quivering— _Why are you in the dark? Don’t cry_ —Why was it dark? All the lights were on, it should not be dark, it was all in his mind— _No, I don’t want to_ —It was dark, it was Godric’s hand, Godric’s fingers lying delicately across his eyes to shield him from his maker’s hollow gaze, he was glad of it— _No, I don’t want to_. There was a kiss, a quivering kiss that carried in his blood and set fire to his veins, a kiss and an embrace, Godric wrapping himself in Eric’s arms, and holding Eric’s hands in his. W _hy are you sad, Godric? Don’t cry. I’m with you._ Eric felt his head falling against Godric’s shoulder. The embrace tightened, then softened, and Godric mirrored his movement, and the words were barely a breath on Eric’s neck.

‘Don’t hate me, Eric.’

‘I couldn’t hate you.’

‘Don’t leave me.’

‘Never.’

Rousing himself from an uneasy slumber, Eric saw Godric slumped on an armchair by the shuttered window, with a book open in his lap. He had fallen asleep. 

Eric felt quite tired too. He ought to go to bed. Pam had worn him out today.


	8. Trapped

‘I changed my mind,’ Pam declared as Eric walked in. ‘Your maker is _sublime._ ’

Godric sat across the room with his back turned to them, and he did not add to Pam’s enthusiastic welcome.

‘What did he do?’ Eric asked, reticently curious. He had been surprised, earlier that evening, when Godric had invited Pam to join him for a walk. She had hummed and hawed, but saying “no” wasn’t a real possibility, so off they went. Eric had not expected her to have anything resembling a good time.

‘He took the—and the—’ Pam stammered, gesticulating elatedly. ‘He _eviscerated_ her! In—in—the blink of an eye! I’d never seen his fangs! I didn’t know he _had_ fangs!’

As she spoke, Eric spotted the smattering of dried blood on her dark dress, and he could not help but steal a glance at Godric’s immaculate back. ‘Come again?’

‘There was blood spraying everywhere! I thought he was going to kill _me_ next!’ In stark contrast with the words, her voice sounded thrilled at the prospect.

‘I wasn’t,’ Godric clarified without moving.

‘I know!’ Pam plopped down on the nearest chair, positively delighted. Had Eric known her voice could hit that note, he might have thought twice before turning her. ‘I wish you’d seen it, Eric. There was nothing left of her! He was... _so...’_

‘Unlike himself?’ Godric completed for her. The edge in his voice, which Pam didn’t recognise, made Eric’s hair stand on end.

‘Like what I’d imagined us to be like,’ Pam rephrased dreamily, springing up a moment later and rushing to Godric. She took his hand in an impulse and dropped it at once, suddenly self-conscious. ‘Can I—will you let me join you next time you hunt?’

‘If Eric doesn’t mind.’

‘I need permission?’ Pam frowned at Eric.

‘You _gutted_ someone?’ Eric asked, disregarding Pam’s question in his surprise.

‘I was hungry.’ Godric’s head tilted towards Pam with a certain softness that had not been there before. There was blood on his chin. ‘You did very well yourself.’

Pam smiled, flattered and smug at once, and she did not sulk when he added that he ‘did this very rarely,’ and that he was tired.

Curtsying genuinely this time, she turned her attentions on Eric, who had not moved from the far end of the room, still gauging the situation. 

‘Come upstairs.’ She pressed her lips to his neck, adding through her teeth, ‘I’m still hungry.’

‘In a minute.’

With a playful graze of her fangs, she left. That graze tickled his skin, and it somehow smelled of Godric’s blood. This much-hoped-for new companionship lost some of its lustre.

Godric shifted in his seat, facing Eric. The front of his clothes was far less pristine than the back. It rather matched Pam’s dress.

‘I think we may have to move again,’ he said, almost apologetic. ‘I’m afraid I left something of a mess.’

‘It’s a big place. It’ll slip through the cracks.’

Godric looked thoroughly doubtful, but said nothing.

‘I haven’t seen you gut anyone in centuries.’

‘I thought she might like it.’ Godric shrugged, eyes flickering to the book on his lap.

‘But that’s—’

‘—unlike me?’ Godric raised his eyes. The intensity of the gaze felt familiar to Eric, yet he could not place it. It was unsettling.

‘It’s just surprising.’

‘Well, she seems to like me better now. I thought you’d be happy,’ Godric shrugged, standing. ‘You’re very difficult to please, my child,’ he added over his shoulder as he walked out.

-x-

Godric made no allowances for familiarity for a good while. Months after that first excursion together, though, he did let Pam join him again – on two consecutive nights. Then twice more, immediately after they had moved to this small village. And then the previous evening. And tonight.

Eric found himself, absurdly, acting as the voice of reason, warning them that it was too rash, alerting the population to a bloodthirsty presence so soon after their arrival. But he only voiced this once, lest his insistence be mistaken for jealousy at the growing camaraderie. And yet... after their little escapades Pam would describe every step, and Eric couldn’t recognise the Godric of her words. He resembled neither the maker of his wild young days, nor this shadow which sat contritely with a book in his hands all the time. It seemed like a new side of his personality, created solely for Pam, and Eric could not help but feel a bit left out. He could not understand this new distance between them, did not know how to react to it after centuries of proximity.

And yes, he was also a little bit jealous.

Sturdy beds were a good thing at these times, as were naive young humans who struck up easy conversations with handsome strangers on the street. One such human was currently trapped between Eric’s body and the headboard, helping him forget about his unsettled thoughts, the pang of fear that he was being replaced, not by a new companion but by his own child. And by his maker as well, since with every little jaunt Pam would return with more stars in her eyes for Godric, and she _would not stop talking about him_ until Eric shut her up, and sometimes he didn’t know which of them spiked his jealousy more.

They were out there, where he didn’t know, doing what he didn’t know, learning what about each other he didn’t know, because he hadn’t been invited along. He ground further into his catch, squeezing her up against the headboard and biting down, concentrating only on the way she went from moaning to making no sound at all, to yelping in tandem with his movements. He paced himself – this one was a delight, he wanted to come back to her later. One last push and a wail came out of her depths that crawled under his skin.

Only when she flopped down onto the bed, blissfully asleep as instructed, and the shriek still reverberated, surprised and pained and overwhelming, did Eric realise it had not come from her.

 _Pam_.

He was out of the house and across the village in a flash, dizzy with the smell of Pam’s fright, cursing himself for not having recognised it at once. But Pam was as fearless as him, if not more so—she was _so frightened—_ he was a terrible maker. He _should_ have recognised it. Godric had never failed _him_.

There she was, just behind those bushes, against that tree. She could not move. Two men held a cloak of sorts tightly around her, its fine silver needlepoint holding her in frozen agony. Her neck burned where the silver touched it, the smoke spiralling up to her forehead, where it met the steam coming off the coin a third man pressed there. They all stood at arm’s length, eyeing her unsheathed fangs warily but loudly complimenting each other on catching ‘the witch’. 

Three men were no obstacle at all. They could not see him where he stood; he could easily rip them all to shreds. Two others emerged from the bushes—they carried wood and leered at Pam as they laid it out around her feet. She tried to push off the silvery fabric that pinned her down, but she was too young still, too weak. She growled, baring her fangs from behind her burning skin, and the hand that held the coin slipped. When it returned the coin to her forehead, Pam snapped at it, and its owner recoiled. Eric, feeling inside his chest how scared she was, swelled with pride.

There was no time for such musings, though; he leapt to her aid, each mauling clear in his mind already. When he saw the nets expertly laid out around Pam and her captors and realised this was hunting ground, he had already lost his footing. 

‘Told you there was another one!’ someone shouted as he hobbled hopelessly at the edge of the dug-out trap, caught in the silver wire of the nets. Eric roared, inwardly and otherwise. Godric and Pam had not been quite as discreet as they believed in their outings. The men had readied themselves for the undead.

They cheered as the silver burned his legs through his half-undone trousers, and he felt them reel him in, neutralised with an extra net. From inside the trap, a long, sharp stake glared at him. Another silvery thing coiled around his neck, choking him, making even the inside of his eyes sting in pain, and all his strength fled him. His mouth opened in a gasp and he could almost taste his charred skin. With renewed cheering, those humiliatingly frail human hands had no trouble propping him up against Pam, bolder now that they had brought down such a large Devil-worshipper.

The silvery fabric draped around Pam bit into his flesh when he was pushed against it. The pain was staggering, and the humiliation of letting himself be caught so easily was bigger still. The men were discussing whether to burn them there or carry them to the town square, so everyone could see. Pam shuddered, and Eric wanted to tell her fire was a good thing – it would loosen the silver and free them – but his tongue sizzled and refused to work. Pam was too petrified to listen to their bond.

While he was lost in thought, the men came up with a third alternative. The youngest of the group moved to stand not very far from them, with his hunting bow drawn and aimed at Pam’s chest. Wooden arrows. Fire wouldn’t kill them, but _those_ would.

The boy took a deep breath, changed his mind and aimed at Eric instead. They were going to die at the hands of a child with a passion for outdated relics, Eric thought, and immediately a red splash obscured his eyesight. He blinked, and the redness redoubled. He had thought it would hurt more. The silver must be scrambling his senses.

Then he was lying on the ground. It felt dry and hard under his side, and there were hands frantically pulling at the silver melting his skin. He did not know why he was still alive, but the cool air on his sweltering flesh was— _Pam_. Where was she?

‘I’m here,’ she replied, uncoiling the net from around his legs.

‘Are you hurt?’ he mumbled, and she snorted, helping him up. She was alive. She had freed herself and overpowered their captors somehow. He ought to scold her for her carelessness, but he felt like he might weep in the process, so he took a different approach.

‘Silver doesn’t kill you. Arrows do. Beware of wood.’

‘Thank you.’ She stared at him, a mocking eyebrow cocked in its customary position. He considered kissing it.

Eric saw him then, observing them from a distance with the maimed remains of the last hunter at his feet.

Now that the last of the silver was off him, the fizzling haze in Eric’s mind began to clear. Five bodies strewn around them, blood pooling from the artless wounds that had claimed them; Pam only lightly sprinkled in red, even less so than he; Godric, on the other hand, looked like he had been dunked in a vat of the stuff, and he was looking at the mess as though he didn’t quite know what he was doing there.

‘You,’ Eric croaked. His charred throat ached. He stood and Pam mimicked him silently, recognising the gravity in his stance. He looked at her, and then at Godric, still unmoving with blood dripping from his chin.

Surprise crept into Godric’s face then, and his eyes darted between Eric and Pam before he shook his head minutely. Eric was glad that Godric could at least acknowledge the depth of his anger. Yet, that irksome shock was still there as Godric’s head shook more vehemently and he muttered something about not knowing something, and Eric started seeing red again.

Only slightly slower in understanding the situation, Pam met Godric’s eyes in similar surprise and added her considerably louder voice to his half-dead mumble. ‘It wasn’t his fault!’

A blur of apologies and refutations followed, and with each sound Eric’s blood boiled more.

‘I just wanted to explore on my own!’

‘We parted just outside the door, Eric.’

‘He didn’t know I was coming here!’

‘I wouldn’t have left her alone in hunting grounds, Eric.’

‘I was just so bored! You were busy!’ Blissfully unaware of just how much worse she was about to make it, Pam added, ‘He was _in a mood_!’

Only his skin still painfully crawling back to its rightful position on his body stopped Eric from actually striking his maker. Godric held his eyes for a moment, then looked down.

‘Be quiet,’ he cut in flatly.

Pam, suddenly aware that something bad had been unleashed here, tried to explain herself one more time. ‘He didn’t know! I was bored! I didn’t—’

‘ _Quiet.’_

She lowered her eyes, emulating Godric’s stance so perfectly it made Eric’s nose twitch.

‘You were childish and rash,’ he clipped out without looking at her, tinting his words with a displeasure worse than anger, ‘in spite of my advice. You endangered us both. I’ll see you at home, and I don’t expect you to stop on the way.’

‘But—’

‘ _Don’t_ disobey your maker, child.’

Pam shifted, hesitated, and slowly turned to leave.

‘And pack,’ he added.

Godric raised his eyes to him at that, but Eric focused instead on fashioning the hunting bow and loose branches into something with which to toss the silver aberrations and the corpses into the trap, which he did in stony silence. He started with the bodies, and he only met his maker’s gaze again when it was time to pick up the last one from where it still lay at Godric’s feet.

‘You are unfair.’

‘Am I,’ Eric replied indifferently, hurling the man into the hole with the others.

‘I would not have endangered her.’

‘And yet,’ Eric bit out, ‘she was in danger.’

‘Didn’t I come to your aid?’ Godric pointed out. ‘You were both safe in the end. As always.’

Eric turned a cold, icy, frozen gaze on him. ‘You convinced my newborn that she was a fitting companion and then left her on her own because you had a _mood._ ’

‘I don’t think of your child as my companion.’ Godric’s face tensed, his eyes hardened. ‘I did not want or seek company tonight. I thought she would be safe on her own. I rather expected her maker to have taught her how to face hunters.’

‘I could have died as well.’ Eric said, giving him a moment’s pause. ‘I nearly did.’

‘I came as soon as our bond called me.’ Godric took a step towards him and Eric, surely for the first time in his life, held up a hand to stop him.

‘Our bond has clearly seen better days.’

Godric thought for a moment, and then, with a calm that made Eric want to rip him into tiny pieces, he said, ‘I understand that you were very frightened on your child’s behalf, but she wasn’t with me, and I can’t feel her. I can’t be responsible for her.’

Eric felt something rising inside him, fermenting more bitterly than anger. Disdain. Disdain for his maker. ‘You can’t even be responsible for yourself.’

The coldness in the words, or maybe the words themselves, caught Godric by surprise. He seemed hurt, and he did not reply.

‘Have you run out of words? Good,’ Eric continued, with an impudence which would never have crossed his imagination, let alone his lips, before. ‘There isn’t _one_ I want to hear. In fact, I would be grateful if you could help me forget that you exist for the next few nights at least.’

Godric opened his mouth, but Eric had already turned around, and he closed it again.

‘I must tend to my child. Finish up, will you? _I’m_ in a mood now.’

The following evenings were lonely. Godric stayed away as requested and Pam, openly taking his side, made herself equally scarce. Eric had no energy to go out and feed or otherwise entertain himself. He could not remain forever locked in his room, however, like a consumptive human, waiting for his anger and his sorrow to evaporate. 

Pam banged on his door as he considered this. He opened without a word.

‘He’s not well,’ she said, and there was no need to explain who, or what.

‘Really.’

‘He’s—’ Eric imagined she was trying to elaborate without divesting Godric of his dignity, and it almost moved him. He imagined that would be quite difficult.

‘He’s not well,’ she ultimately repeated. Eric neglected to inform her that he knew, because everything Godric felt was currently coursing through his veins. Even now his body tensed, poised to leap to his maker’s side.

‘He’s never well.’

Let Godric squirm.

Pam launched into a heated defence of Godric’s honour, but he cut her off at once, grabbing her arm, pulling her into the room, feeling the veins on her neck under the fashionable collar.

‘I don’t care how unwell he is.’ He slammed the door shut behind them and shoved her onto the bed, next to the corpse of his dinner from a few nights ago. ‘And neither do you. You’re not his.’

It was a long night for all three.


	9. Bound

They were in the drawing room, their voices lowered. They quieted down when Eric walked in, as though he were an intruder with nothing to add to their conversation.

‘I trust you are feeling better?’ he asked without preamble, sounding raspier than he wanted. Godric, nodding simply, had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘A word, if I may?’

Godric nodded again. An instant of expectant silence followed. Eric, suddenly deep in study of the carpet, did not speak. The moment lengthened, and Godric quietly asked Pam to leave them.

‘You’re very formal tonight,’ he noted softly.

‘The situation,’ Eric murmured, trying to set his vocal cords into proper motion, ‘calls for it’.

His eyes flickered up, then down again, pathetically. Half a minute in the same room and he crumbled.

‘And what is the situation?’ Godric straightened up.

‘I...’ Eric began. The words crowded at the back of his throat and slipped, shamefaced, back into his depths. Godric walked up to him, and there was no escaping him then. 

‘Are you ill?’ Godric sounded concerned. Eric couldn’t recall the last time Godric had expressed concern for him. ‘Have you had infected blood?’

Godric’s hand rested on Eric’s arm, where an unpleasant tingle was steadily growing into pain, and he could not tear his eyes from it. He wanted to place his own hand over Godric’s, ease into the embrace he felt he owed him. He had missed Godric more these last few nights, under the same roof, than on any other occasion they had been apart.

‘As I have missed you,’ Godric said in a tender voice, and Eric was dismayed to realise he had spoken aloud. He blinked and swallowed, shifted and fidgeted. If he didn’t prise himself out of Godric’s grasp, he wouldn’t be able to get a word out.

What a pitiable figure he must cut. Godric was asking him again if he was unwell, if he needed help. Both his hands were on Eric now, fondly steering him so they could sit together, and if Eric did not voice himself now, he never would.

‘I wish to be released.’

Godric went quiet abruptly, mid-anxious question. His grip faltered enough that Eric could drag himself out of it. Suddenly freed, he lost his balance and nearly embarrassed himself by falling off a two-foot tall sofa.

‘Did I hear you correctly?’ Godric stared at him, incredulous, but Eric couldn’t bring himself to raise his eyes.

He pursed his lips and nodded, not trusting himself with more words just now. The pain was spreading, enveloping his skin, coiling around his insides. Why was this so difficult? It was a fairly common request. Vampires released their children routinely. And yet, he could feel their bond protesting almost physically.

‘So that’s what you’ve been brewing up in your room,’ Godric said curtly. ‘Look at me.’

Eric had to obey. Contrary to what his tone suggested, Godric didn’t look angry as much as hurt— his old maker, his father, his brother and his son was surprised, and hurt. Eric did not want to hurt him. ‘Forgive me.’

‘Come in, Pam,’ Godric spoke to the walls. The doorknob turned at once, even as Eric shook his head in wild protest. ‘Come sit with us. I’m sorry, I know you’re hungry. It’s just for a moment.’

Pam walked in warily. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Didn’t you hear your maker?’ Godric said, arranging Eric’s hair behind his ear with a surprisingly gentle hand. ‘He wants to be released.’

‘From what binds?’ she asked, after a moment’s hesitation.

Godric straightened Eric’s forever unkempt sleeves, which he had buttoned for once. ‘Mine.’

‘I don’t want her here,’ Eric ground out. His bones were going stiff from the pain. There was enough agony in this without his child in attendance.

‘Hmm?’ Godric flattened Eric’s collar and lifted his chin, soft as a caress. ‘There, that’s much better.’ His thumb traced Eric’s jaw, almost lazily. ‘I think it could be very instructive for her. For you both. I’m a conscientious maker. I care very deeply about the instruc—take your hand out of your hair, Eric. You’re going to ruin it again.’

‘What _is_ this about?’ Pam interrupted.

‘You’re right. The situation does call for formality,’ Godric conceded.

A hand bore down on Eric’s shoulder, and the next instant he was on his knees, crouching down, looking at the carpet again. Godric motioned for Pam to join him on the sofa.

‘Well? We’re waiting, your child and I. Shall we keep his sprightly?’

Eric inhaled, but no words came out. He felt sick, inside where no relief could reach him. It was almost like sharing in one of Godric’s panics, but Godric had rarely looked so composed.

‘Come now, Eric, calm down. This is very unlike you. You’ve already stated your purpose. The worst of it has passed. You just have to do it properly, now.’

‘I wish to be released,’ Eric repeated, in a voice so small he could barely believe it was his own.

‘Now, Eric, don’t be inconsiderate. Pam doesn’t know what that means. You must rephrase it for her.’

The migraine that had circled Eric since he had begun to – seriously – consider the idea crashed down on him now, and it was all he could do not to clutch at his head. _Rephrase_? He couldn’t even say his own name. He felt like his skin was trying to peel itself off his flesh. 

‘Are you very unwell?’ Godric’s voice was flat now, not remotely concerned, although the hand he brought to Eric’s cheek was soft. It dulled the pain just enough that he could hear. ‘I’ll explain it then, shall I? No, don’t worry, Pam, he’ll be all right in a second. Your maker is... rather histrionically trying to obtain his release. It means he wishes to be independent.’

‘Oh.’ Pam was underwhelmed. 

Eric lowered his head with a groan. Godric’s hand slipped away.

‘See, the thing about a release,’ Godric went on scholarly, ‘is that it cannot be reversed. So you have to be really sure you want it. Once you _are_ sure, though, it’s quite straightforward.’

Reassured by Godric’s calm voice, and thinking maybe Eric was trying to make a point in their absurd spat, Pam asked, ‘Is all of this really necessary, then?’

Eric flinched when Godric’s hand fell on him again. It grabbed him under the chin and pushed his head up, so he had to face his maker while he continued to explain. ‘Well, personal styles vary.’

‘Send her out,’ Eric rasped out.

Godric ignored him. ‘It is, after all, a clean break from... from all your joint past, all your memories, any future...’ Godric chewed on his words and added simply, ‘Everyone has their own way to do it.’

The end of the sentence was punctuated by a hard squeeze to Eric’s jaw, so he would look up.

‘How would _you_ go about severing your bond with your maker, Pam?’

Pam looked from one to the other in dawning horror. To a newborn it felt like death.

‘Because Eric wants me,’ Godric concluded, unforgiving, ‘to take an almost thousand-year-old bond and shred it.’ He let go of Eric’s jaw, and Eric stumbled forward, unable and unwilling to look up.

‘I don’t _want_ to break our bond.’ Eric braced his hands against the floor to ease the pain tearing through him, and the strain made them shake. A trickle of blood seeped out from under the sleeve that Godric had thoughtfully straightened. Pam’s eyes widened.

‘I’ll wager Eric is tired of my _moods,’_ Godric went on bitterly, ‘He seems to have grown too delicate for my weaknesses—’

‘Eric, the other night it—he—it wasn’t—’ Pam rushed to Eric’s side, stunned into silence as she saw the state of him from up close.

‘—even though I was never too delicate for his.’

‘That’s not true,’ Eric barked through the blood that began to pool in his mouth and drip as he spoke. ‘None of that... is true.’

Seeming to lose interest in release etiquette, Pam moved to steady him. However deep her sulk, come to this juncture she was indisputably on the side of her maker.

‘Why is he bleeding? What’s going on?’ she asked, both worried and frustrated. If he had the strength for it, Eric would have smiled. She hated being in the dark, as he did. ‘Why are you bleeding?’

‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled weakly. A familiar sorrow, Godric’s, slithered into his veins, cradling his own distress. Godric didn’t feel as composed as he looked, then. How Eric wanted to crawl up to him, beg for forgiveness – though he wasn’t sure why – and end this. The sound of Pam’s voice, terrified on his behalf, brought him back to the present moment. 

He made to send her away again but, before she could finish wobbling her head in a panicked refusal, Godric cut in. ‘No. Her lesson isn’t over yet.’

‘Could you both wait,’ Pam asked sharply, as though realising she was the only sane person in the room, ‘until he’s stopped bleeding?’

‘It’ll stop soon enough,’ Godric assured her, crouching beside them and pushing her smoothly away from Eric. Shifting his focus completely to Eric, he added, ‘I promise.’

Unsteady without Pam propping him up, Eric’s knees faltered. It felt like he was being flayed alive. Godric was very close, leaning in, hand raised, poised for a caress, but not quite. 

‘You are in a lot of pain.’ He brushed Eric’s temple with his own. The pain crept up his legs, down his arms, it pressed into his chest, his cuffs were going crimson, his collar was dotted with red, down his stomach the fabric was darkening. Pam, horrified, tried to help him, but Godric stopped her with an arctic look and shut her out with a switch to Old Norse. ‘Is this a genuine desire, my child?’

Eric groaned.

‘Why, then?’ Godric’s voice was soft now. His fingers wove through Eric’s hair, sweet and light, around the back of his head and down his spine. Unmanned by the touch, the searing pain and the word on his tongue alike, Eric heard himself beg.

‘ _Please_.’

Godric showed no signs that he had heard it. His arms wound around Eric, soft but strong, the protective embrace of a maker. Eric leaned into the touch and the excruciating pressure inside his skull eased a notch. Godric shifted to accommodate him and they were silent for a moment, Pam observing them impotently. Godric shifted him softly so that Eric’s head could rest on the crook of his neck. Eric’s fangs itched. All at once, the humiliation of the moment hit him and the pain returned with sharp stabs in his veins. He wheezed.

‘Calm down, calm down.’ Godric petted his hair lovingly, nudged his cheek. ‘Tell me. I’ll keep it a secret. What was that?’ he prompted when Eric mumbled something incomprehensible.

‘I don’t have the _strength_ for it otherwise,’ Eric ground out. ‘ _I can’t_.’

Godric’s hands stilled on his back. ‘ _Have_ you tried to leave me, then?’

Eric slumped against him with a pitiful sigh. Godric pulled back to look him in the eye.

‘Have you?’ he insisted, adding, ‘No, calm down,’ because the strain was drawing blood from Eric’s scalp.

Eric stammered every word that crossed his mind, mostly in the wrong order, in a jumble that made Pam cringe even though she didn’t understand what was being said.

‘That’s enough. I understand.’

‘... My legs won’t walk, the doors won’t open, she’s my _child_ —’

‘I said I understood.’ Godric switched back into English and put his fingers to Eric’s lips to still him. The touch was much lighter than Eric expected. Those fingertips brushed up his cheek, into his bleeding temples, and he had to keep his eyelids from fluttering shut.

‘Release me, then. _Please_.’

They were so tender, Godric’s fingers tracing his skin, his shoulders, locking behind his back while Godric’s nose brushed his cheek, inhaling against the skin. His desire to leave faded with every touch, every hint that he belonged right in this embrace. He was losing his mind.

‘No.’

Godric let go abruptly, leaving Eric to crumble and tremble and bleed on his own. He walked back to the sofa, where he sat solemnly, while Pam flew to hold Eric up. He fell gratefully into her arms, crushed by the pain and the refusal in equal measure.

Godric gave them a considering look, and then another. He looked Eric up and down, his mighty child bleeding helplessly on his carpet. He shook, wheezed, forced himself to meet Godric’s eyes when he felt them wandering to his face. And he begged to be released. The showcase in suffering went on, and Godric observed it for a long while, lost in his own thoughts. Pam got tired of it.

‘Can you do something,’ she snapped, ‘other than stare significantly at him?’

‘I intend to.’

‘ _Today.’_

‘This is not the time for your wit, infant...’ Godric clipped out, ‘such as it is.’

Pam was suddenly reminded of the instant dislike she had felt for this boy.

Godric twined his fingers over his knee as if readying to tell a story. ‘Eric, look at me.’

‘You’ve already said no,’ Pam hissed, ‘What else do you want? Eric...’

‘He has to look at me.’

Steadying himself in Pam’s arms, Eric obeyed.

‘Pay attention, Pam. This is where the magic happens,’ Godric warned. She ran her hands over Eric’s arms, where the shirt was dampening with blood, and she felt his chest heaving in pain.

‘Think back to my last command to you, Eric.’

Eric looked at him in confusion. Perhaps he _was_ losing his mind. Godric hadn’t commanded him in a very long time. They had moved past that.

‘You don’t recall?’

Eric gave a jerky shake of the head. His skin burned where Pam touched it, and his mouth was still full of watery blood. It cut into his tongue.

‘No, of course you don’t. Think back to when you made your delightful child, then.’

Eric’s head pounded. He didn’t know what to make of the words. Back when he had made Pam? He had been thrilled. She was stroppy, he was doting, Godric was... unimpressed...

\---

A splintered memory started to cobble itself together; of fangs lying against his neck, of trying to leave with dignity and devotion intact, and Godric promising to learn how to love Pam. _I will keep my darkness from you.’_ Eric didn’t want more coldness still, he wanted to leave. ‘I must go,’ he had tried to say. ‘I will lose myself—’ he had muttered, his voice wavering in anticipation of the bite.

A change of tone and fangs grazing deeper, almost breaking the skin. ‘I am already lost,’ whispered ruefully into his neck. The fingertips at his back, every one of them, pressed harder. Eric’s arms had known no reaction other than to return this embrace that bent him over the arm of the chair and onto the floor. ‘I won’t have you hate me.’

His hand had moved to Godric’s shoulder, his neck had tensed against the fangs and, just for a moment, he had set aside his need to leave. And still the bite didn’t come, because Godric had raised his head. ‘But you will, you will hate me...’ Godric’s eyes hovered above his, large with dread, and Eric had wondered madly what Pam would think if she walked in and saw him crushed in his maker’s arms, rocking on the carpet, offering himself like a starved man, and Godric pulling away. Which of them would his proud child despise more?

‘No,’ Godric said with a darkened gaze, his mind made up. ‘You won’t hate me. What’s to hate?’ His hand had gone under Eric’s shirt to trace his scars, he had lowered shaking lips to Eric’s forehead, and he spoke through them, against Eric’s skin, and Eric frowned at the words. ‘You’ve been out with your lovely child. I’ve been reading all evening. Tonight has been a good night.’

Eric had known then what Godric meant to do, and he had thrashed against the steel grip of that youthful body, squirmed away from the lips on his forehead. ‘No, I don’t want to—’ And the lips had pressed against his to shut him up, breaking the skin on his mouth, on his tongue, and even as he fought, and pushed, and kicked out, Eric’s fangs could not hold back a second longer. ‘No, I don’t want to —’ he had garbled helplessly through their joined blood. ‘I want to leave—’ The arms around him tightened, but the lips were soft, all the blood was gone now. Now it was just a kiss. ‘I’m sorry, Eric,’ Godric had murmured against his mouth. ‘Don’t hate me.’

\---

Godric sat forward, leaning towards him, and Eric’s eyes snapped towards his. Godric’s whisper was soft.

‘I retract my command.’

_‘You won’t leave me. You won’t remember that you wanted to. Your child tired you out. I fell asleep with my books. And you’ll stay. As your maker, I command you.’_

A great breath rumbled out of Eric and he went very still. He no longer bled. The pain subsided. He could think again. For a moment, only Pam’s head moved, eyes darting in confusion between Godric’s stony calm and Eric’s dawning anger.

‘Is it easier now that you’re not fighting a command?’ Godric asked.

‘You—’ he rasped out, loathing the hurt he could could not mask. He did not want to feel hurt. He wanted his feelings to match his thoughts, which were only of _carnage_.

‘Behold, Pam, the power a maker wields,’ Godric held forth professorially. ‘Well, being reduced to monosyllables is Eric’s personal touch. Might I suggest you obtain your release early on, so that you can avoid lamentable scenes such as this?’

‘Don’t talk to her,’ Eric growled, rearing up as if ready to pounce, overwhelmed by the betrayal. Commanded to stay. He had wanted to leave and he had been _commanded to stay_. His will taken away from him, bent into submission like a captive. ‘Don’t talk to her, don’t touch her, don’t _look_ at her.’

‘This might be a good moment for you to leave,’ Godric addressed Pam, to which Eric nodded violently, and she hesitated only for a split second before obeying. ‘You should probably consider packing,’ Godric called after her, ‘if you haven’t already,’ he added, looking straight at Eric.

‘You,’ Eric snarled once they were alone again, ‘cruel, manipulative—’

‘Cruel, I’m sure. But I never manipulated you,’ Godric corrected firmly. ‘I commanded you. If you don’t know the difference, I fear for your future.’

Eric rose, towering over his maker.

‘Kneel, _’_ Godric clipped out.

Eric glowered defiantly at him.

Godric strode to him, looking up crossly. ‘I am your maker. I will not have you look down at me. _Kneel.’_

Ever so slowly, his joints fizzing with anger, Eric lowered himself until he was the one looking up.

‘Now,’ Godric instructed calmly, ‘if you think you can do it without insulting me, you may ask your questions. I will answer them all.’

Eric glared up at him, evidently unable to find non-insulting words.

‘Do you _have_ any questions?’

A single word eventually squeezed itself out of Eric’s clenched jaw. ‘ _Why?_ ’

‘Because you were going to leave me.’

A long silence followed, while Eric processed this, as well as the expression on Godric’s face, neither smug nor repentant and unlike any other Eric had seen in him.

‘It was my right,’ he argued back.

‘You have no rights but those that I have conferred upon you.’

‘You commanded me to stay.’

‘Yes.’

‘And to _forget_.’

‘Yes.’

‘ _Why?_ ’

‘Because you would have hated me otherwise.’

‘I hate you _now_.’

Godric held his gaze silently.

‘A puppet,’ Eric went on, disbelieving. _Here_ lay the betrayal, _here_ lay the hurt. Only he knew how difficult it had been even to conjure up the thought of leaving his maker. Then the bravery to speak it. And it had been waved away, erased as if he were... ‘a trinket, a pet, a servitor—’

‘Your vocabulary has improved.’

‘An indentured servant, bound to your fancy—’

‘The Viking objects to it?’

‘ _Yes_ ,’ Eric gritted out. ‘You knew what I was when you found me. You knew what I would be. Is that not why you chose me?’

Godric nodded.

‘And now you would have me _serve_. And _forget_ that I serve. So I would do it meekly and be _grateful to be there._ ’

With a small shake of his head, Godric crouched down, and they were eye to eye again. ‘Is that what you think of me?’

In a low growl, because all his energy was going into not ripping out his maker’s veins, Eric started, ‘I will meet the sun before—’

Godric clapped his hands on either side of Eric’s face and leaned closer.

‘I couldn’t let you go.’

Eric twisted and snarled, but Godric didn’t loosen his grip.

‘You looked at me—that night—the same way you’re looking at me now. No,’ Godric clarified when Eric snorted loudly, ‘not the anger. The disappointment.’ Eric’s eyes blazed at him. ‘I had failed you. You looked... _hollow_.’ Eric sputtered at the hypocrisy. ‘Like you’d run out of feelings. You wanted to take your child and go. Leave me behind. I just wanted...’ Godric stopped himself, either looking for the words or the phrasing, and Eric took the opportunity to argue back. 

‘It wouldn’t have been our first time apart. I wasn’t asking for my release.’

‘You might as well have been. It was the first time you didn’t mean to come back. And,’ Godric looked down, and then up again with a harder set to his face, ‘the first time with a companion of your own.’

Eric stared at him. Then he clawed at the hands that held him in place, which didn’t shift a millimetre.

‘I don’t think,’ Godric continued, ignoring his child’s struggle, ‘I have ever hated anyone as strongly as I did her, when you introduced her—no, that’s a lie. As I did _after_ you’d introduced her, when you looked at her as if she were your whole world.’ Godric gave a small chuckle. ‘It seems childish, doesn’t it? I suppose it must be. But then again...’

_You reduce me to the worst in me._

‘My child is _not_ the reason you bound me like an animal,’ Eric barked.

‘No,’ Godric looked at him quizzically. ‘But when she arrived, I lost you.’

‘That is a _lie_.’

‘We had fed from each other not long before,’ Godric reminded him. ‘I saw into you. All I could see was her. Her life, and her energy, and this... pervasive... _love_ that was exciting and pure, and had no shadows. And just like that, I was gone.’

‘You wer— _’_

‘The way she went prissing about as if she owned you, and you _smiled._ Your eyes _shone._ Have you ever felt inadequate in the face of a day-old vampire, Eric?’

‘I have felt inadequate in the face of _humans._ ’

‘I was surprised our bond didn’t show you the very depth of my loathing. I worried it might. Your mind was obviously elsewhere.’ Godric shrugged, oblivious to Eric’s words. ‘It was very selfish, I know. But I _am_ selfish. You know that. I devour all that surrounds me. Stop grabbing me. I’m not going to let go.’ Panting in fury, Eric dropped his hands.

‘I did eventually come round to it. She made you happy, and I couldn’t fault that. I got used to her. I’m not completely without a heart, Eric. It’s just there’s no room for anyone in it but you.’

The words hung between them. When Eric opened his mouth to reply, Godric leant against him in a movement so swift that Eric stumbled back; Godric moved his iron grip to the back of Eric’s head, Eric collided with the absurd little coffee table behind him, and Godric’s head lay against his neck in a distorted echo of so many other nights, making no move to bite him, simply breathing against his skin in that eerie, human-like way of his, and Eric couldn’t escape his hold. Inside him, the Viking still roared for his lost dignity, and he still boiled with an all-consuming, unforgiving rage.

And even so, the words that came out of him, bitter but resigned, were, ‘You were never out of mine.’

Godric’s grip tightened and Eric had to remind himself that he was furious, and that he could not, he _would_ not return the embrace. There they stayed for a good while, breathing in each other’s scent, feeling each other’s blood calling out from beneath their clothes, under their skin.

At last, Eric let himself go limp, in body and in voice. ‘Until now.’

Without loosening his grip, Godric froze against his neck.

‘You played with my mind. You bound me against my will. And you didn’t even allow me the dignity to know of my servitude.’

‘You will not forgive me.’

‘No.’

One of Godric’s hands moved from Eric’s back to his chest, where his heart would be pounding wildly if he were alive, and along the smart shirt that Eric had worn for the occasion, feeling the shape of the old Viking necklace under the fabric as the fingers glided up to Eric’s neck, his cheek.

‘It’s certainly astounding, even after thousands of years... the things one will do for love.’

His small voice against Eric’s neck verged on penitence. Eric almost, _almost,_ melted towards it. 

‘Don’t love me this way.’

‘I know no other.’

Eric felt the unsheathing of fangs against his neck.

‘I didn’t mean to debase you, Viking.’

Godric raised his head, facing Eric straight on, and his sad eyes were, for once, full of the old fire that had made Eric follow him into eternity.

‘I didn’t want to command you. I just didn’t want you to _go_.’


	10. By Will or By Force

Godric's fangs descended on Eric again, but this time they came with a bite. It broke his skin, sharp and possessive, and Eric despised himself for burning under it, even in his rage. He arched towards it and away from it at once, in a struggle that tore a gasp out of him, and a triumphant sound out of Godric. 

But the dishonoured Viking inside him spoke louder this time, and he would not let this very last shred of his dignity be taken from him. Godric detested being ignored. If Eric couldn’t fight the grip, he could – he could make himself – spurn the touch, and all that had set him afire before. He thought of the command, of his enforced servility, and it was no effort at all to keep his fangs sheathed, to lie inert and let himself be drunk from.

And Godric drank, ravenously, tasting the skin as much as the blood, latching onto him with an ardour that did not belong to his lucid moments. He did not notice that there was no more arching, there were no more gasps, until he adjusted himself for a responding bite and a resolutely shut mouth met him. 

He pulled back, Eric's blood still reddening his lips, and he looked surprised. 'You will deny me...?'

'I don't seem to have the luxury of the choice.'

'Eric,' Godric sounded condescending. Eric held his gaze evenly, while the Viking inside him put up palisades and shut himself off with a brazen ease. He was ready to let himself be puppeteered.

'Eric,' Godric repeated in a warm breath, teasing him with not a hint of uncertainty. He was so sure of his sway over Eric – rightly so, tragically for Eric. He couldn't stop his blood from humming behind the palisades, nor the memories of ten perfect centuries from weaving into his current disposition. There had been so much... devotion... there. Godric leaned in to nip at his ear and nuzzle his temple, returning to face him with his forehead reddened from the blood of Eric's anguish. The rage roared louder than all else again. Eric’s muscles tensed, and his lips pressed together harder, his throat aching with the retort he couldn't bring himself to word. And his blood shamed him with its humming, the way it seemed to push against his flesh, towards his maker. But he did not respond.

A blistering gaze snaked over him for a long moment, taking in every feature, curve and hollow, every indignant inch of him, and Godric changed approaches. He retracted his fangs. The fire in his eyes lowered to a simmer, the playful prelude to so many adventures, so many memories. A feather-light hand rose to trace Eric’s furrowed brow, his nose, his ear, his neck, where the tendons vibrated grudgingly under the lazy touch. His other hand on Eric’s back, the embrace that had moved Godric half atop him, and yes, that gaze, held him trapped.

Then Godric’s mouth dipped again, not towards Eric’s neck but to rest heavily against his cheek, not forceful but yearning, not chaste at all. Eric’s legs, straining against the embrace, faltered. The Viking found himself having to fight for his ground. 

He felt his arms being lifted from where they hung, lifeless, on the carpet, raised above his bowed torso, onto Godric's shoulders, around them and behind Godric's back. It mirrored his own shamed, shameful action that night, on the river, and he didn't like it. But the movement brought them closer together. Against his judgement, against his will, his skin tingled.

‘My most beloved,’ the words came to him just above a whisper. Never in his life, or death, had Eric been anyone’s beloved. Caught by surprise, the Viking staggered behind his palisade, and Godric felt that breach opening before him. His lips dragged their longing touch from Eric’s cheek to the corner of his mouth. They were undemanding but intent, and they pressed in soft bursts, just enough to remind Eric that they were there, and of why he had never turned them away. He felt the lightest kneading of fingertips on his arms.

‘My companion.’ The sound would have found its way into him if his lips weren’t pressed together so hard. Surely _this_ was manipulation, Eric thought, under that pulsing, unhurried caress. Hands glided up his arms, framing the tension on his shoulders, and up his neck, cupping his cheeks, almost reverent, and not reverent at all.

Godric’s lips parted. Fangless teeth grazed the line of Eric’s upper lip, ever so lightly, barely there at all. A tongue came out to wet the skin, so very briefly, and the lips travelled on, laying the same unhurried, pulsing pressure on the other corner of his mouth. Godric’s hands still cupped his cheeks, almost worshipful, and not worshipful at all. Nothing held his arms around Godric’s shoulders now, but Eric didn’t notice. The Viking looked on, appalled.

Godric breathed in, and Eric wondered faintly which word of manipulation he would hear now, but no sound came out when those lips parted. They closed flush against his mouth instead. They pressed against his, soft but unyielding, feeling for a flutter, a shiver, any minuscule sign of another breach. Eric’s lips were still bloody from the earlier strain. But they throbbed. They ached. His eyes decided that they would give in, if he wouldn’t, and they fluttered shut. Then there was only his treacherous blood, and his degraded rage trying not to drown in that touch.

So unhurried that Eric barely felt it happening, Godric’s lips moved again, weighing on his own to part them, millimetre by excruciating millimetre. The pressure eased and returned, on his upper lip, on his lower lip, taking them on a sweet dance, together and apart, soft and yearning, and so undemanding. Briefly, coyly testing the boundaries, a tongue came out again and it touched his, because Eric had forgotten to keep his mouth closed. He wanted to respond. He tried not to respond. One by one, the staves in the palisade teetered, and the Viking flailed madly to keep them up.

‘Why do you like kissing so much?’ It was an approving murmur, not a complaint. ‘My hidden romantic...’

‘I don’t,’ His reply came out muffled, feeble, and it received an equally muffled chuckle in response. But he didn’t, Eric’s mind insisted, with Godric’s mouth pressing playfully against his. Kissing was just an easy gateway to more interesting affairs. There was that tongue again, teasing the tip of his just an instant longer, and retreating just as he started to push against it.

‘Liar.’ Godric’s mouth slithered down his jaw, scraping the skin with his teeth, and coming, soft and heated alike, to worry the spot he had bitten, where two hardening drops of blood still waited for him. Eric heard himself sigh.

‘Because you always did,’ he confessed, barely aware that he was speaking aloud, but knowing it was true as soon as the words were out. Godric’s mouth stilled against his skin.

Saying that had been a bad mistake. The eyes that rose to meet his were ablaze. Eric knew he should add something, quickly, but he couldn’t find the words, and by the time he did there was a mouth swallowing them, and now it was neither soft nor undemanding. It closed on his lips, it bit them, it crushed the flesh, it imposed and it claimed. There were hands on the back of his head, under his shirt, clutching his shoulder, digging into his back, pulling him closer, and a chest weighing against him, legs tangling in his, tethering him, and that mouth trapping his, consuming him whole, barely leaving him the strength to respond. Eric was dimly aware that he _was_ responding, that he was making the kind of sounds he usually elicited from his prey. 

‘My own. ’ Godric’s mouth had moved to unleash a coil of fire down his neck, his throat, under his collar. The top buttons had somehow come undone, his necklace pushed out of the way. The breath hitting his chest scorched him. The hands tracing his scars dug deep into his flesh, and the body on his pressed harder, choking all movement out of him. ‘Mine, mine, mine, mine...’

Eric’s eyes snapped open, and he was suddenly reminded of what had brought him to that carpet.

He cleared his throat. Godric seemed to enjoy the rumbling of it. He removed his hands from where they had been tangled in Godric’s clothes, and it gave Godric the room to pull him closer still. He braced a foot against the sofa for balance, and the body half-straddled on his leg slid further onto him. Godric made an appreciative noise, and Eric’s chest heaved, it _heaved_ towards it.

No, no, no. 

No.

Calling on all that he had to steady himself, Eric cleared his throat again and pushed himself up just a bit, just enough that he could wrestle some balance away from the grip that encased him. The Viking took over, hissing his contempt for Eric’s weakness, for the ease with which he gave himself away.

‘If it came down to this, in the end,’ he gasped out, grabbing Godric’s head with both hands to tear it away from his skin, ‘you could have told me centuries ago.’

Surprised by the sudden verbosity, Godric sat back a bit. It freed him up just enough that Eric could stretch, rest his neck against that ridiculous coffee table, the reminder of Godric’s equally ridiculous fascination with _the human way_ , and gather his thoughts. 

‘... spared me the hassle,’ he added, his brain too addled to think of anything more elaborate. Fastening his eyes on Godric’s, he held up his chin, took a hand to his shirt and started to undo what was left of the buttons.

‘If it came down to...?’ Godric raised a questioning eyebrow. Eric didn’t miss a beat.

‘I should think it’s self-evident.’

Eric made a slow, somewhat embarrassing show of untucking his shirt and fanning it out before starting on the trousers. Godric’s hand stilled his with a tight grasp. Although it pressed against Eric’s crotch, there was no seduction in the movement, none in his voice.

‘Elucidate me.’

‘Is it not the only part of me you haven’t taken,’ Eric continued, working around Godric’s hand, ‘by will or by force?’ Between tugs and pulls, the waistband loosened enough that he could inch it down his hips. The stilted manoeuvre ground their lower bodies together.

Sufficiently exposed to make his point, Eric let his hands fall to his sides, adjusted his groin against Godric’s unyielding grip, and held Godric’s rapidly cooling gaze expectantly. ‘Well?’

‘You think I would force you?’

‘I’m surprised that is now becoming an issue,’ Eric replied frostily.

Godric looked down at his hand on Eric’s crotch for a moment. Then, slowly, he raked his eyes over Eric’s stomach peppered with red, the bloodied shirt hanging off him, his chest, the collarbone, where his mouth had only just cleaned off the blood, the neck, the mouth, sneering now but so alive against his a moment ago, and the eyes, meeting his scornfully.

He must have seen something, as his gaze travelled up, that Eric had not meant to reveal. The smirk that formed on his lips was not the reaction Eric had expected.

‘And do you think,’ Godric drawled in a very low voice, sending his hand on the same path his eyes had cleared, ‘there is anything you can offer me,’ and lowering his body after his hand, ‘that I couldn’t have taken already,’ his mouth hovered, once again, a hair’s breadth from Eric’s, ‘by will or by force?’ The words barely brushed his skin, and Godric’s eyes bore into his.

‘Why would you think I am _offering_ anything?’

Godric breathed out in an amused almost-chuckle. ‘Am I to take it, then?’ he murmured. Having woven itself into Eric’s hair, his hand started on a downwards path, along his shoulder, past the crumpled shirt, down Eric’s side, the small of his back, back around to his hip, gripping his free thigh, pulling it towards his own. Every inch he touched tingled shamelessly. ‘By force?’ His other hand rose to grip Eric’s stubbornly set jaw. ‘Shall I?’ He did chuckle now, but the sound cut off abruptly when his mouth fell on Eric’s again, in a hard kiss that took him completely by surprise and made him forget that he was trying to be stoic and detached. With the kiss secured, the hand on Eric’s jaw moved, curling around his neck just short of a throttle for a moment, then down his chest, dragging along his side until Eric’s skin screamed, and he had to ball his hands against the floor to stop his back from arching. Godric broke away only to ask, ‘How hard will I have to work?’ and returned to the kiss, much gentler now, almost as soft as at the start of this mess.

 _Not very, obviously_. The mortifying thought crossed Eric’s disintegrating mind, but he would die before he admitted it and, at any rate, Godric was talking again.

‘I never pictured you reading bodice-rippers, of all things.’ His voice was playful once more, and his body moved along Eric’s with the grace and the danger of a serpent. The hand on Eric’s thigh still held him in a steely grip, but that other hand, having made each of his ribs sing, was now travelling leisurely down his spine, awakening every inch of it, _oh no..._ ‘You have no bodice for me to rip...’

Eric could feel himself floundering helplessly. That hand stroked the small of his back, made it arch, _oh no,_ then it inched down into the crumpled fabric of Eric’s half-undone trousers, _oh no,_ that other hand travelled up the inside of his thigh, _oh no, oh yes, yes.._. The Viking pushed, and prodded, and speared him to remind him of his outrage, and eventually he found his voice. ‘You found something else you could rip.’

Godric froze, and Eric was ashamed to note that hands, body and mouth tormented him just as effectively in their stillness as they had in motion.

Godric pulled back just enough to lock eyes with him. ‘Make me stop, or let me continue.’ His voice was strained, so unlike him. ‘I will follow your lead.’ He looked uncertain now, and it made Eric’s insides twist. ‘Don’t play.’

Eric was relieved. He could make a movement, speak a word, and the insanity of this moment would end. They would be themselves again. But he was weak, he was so pathetically weak. The unthinkable, well and truly awakened, roared as loudly in his veins as the indignant Viking. Dignity? Hadn’t all of his been stripped away already?

Godric waited. Eric’s lips quivered but the words would not come. He found himself flooded by some... feeling... that had never been there before, that he didn’t recognise. It hurt and warmed him all at once, it tempered even the Viking’s rage with its tenderness, it strengthened and weakened his unspeakable desires in one swoop, and he didn’t know what to do with it. He found his hand tracing the side of his maker’s body, so hard against him, in a reverse mirror of Godric’s earlier movement, from the small of his tense back to his shoulder, into his hair and down his neck towards the collarbone and the tree of life etched into the skin, which had given him so many centuries of unbridled joy, and so many years of searing pain. His fingertips lingered there while he organised his thoughts and his feelings into some sort of order.

Then, before he could order his body to stop, before he even knew he was doing it, he raised his aching neck and touched his lips to the ink in a kiss both smouldering and chaste, and as reverent as ever he had been. A gargled sound came out of Godric. Eric’s lips melted against the tree that had given him life, the flesh that had allowed him to live it. Godric’s own mouth pressed onto his hair, and those hands moved along his skin in a needy embrace. He felt himself being lowered, pressed against, lips and hands and hips more insistent, and then he had to move. Painfully, gingerly, he brought both his hands to rest, splayed out, against Godric’s chest, so he could tear his mouth away to murmur two solitary words. 

‘No more.’


	11. Epilogue

The embrace didn't loosen, but neither did it tighten. They held still, tangled in one another, each listening to his own turmoil, to the thrumming of the other’s blood. Eric’s own warm breath, that silly tic Godric had given him, still washed over the ink, warming the skin beneath it. The lips cushioned in his hair shivered, and Godric shifted so he could look down at Eric's hands on his chest and cover them with his own. Their fingers weaved together unbidden, two cogs in the same machine, and together they rested for a moment, then another, and one more. 

Then he heard a dragging, shuddering sigh. Godric's grip tightened to lift Eric's hands off him and, determinedly looking down, he stood and walked to the shuttered window, collecting himself with his back to Eric.

Still dazed, sensations clashing wildly inside him, Eric let himself fall back onto the carpet with a thud, and there he lay, staring intently at the ceiling and seeing nothing. The silence lengthened. One of them had to break it.

'You asked me, earlier,' Eric said, in a wavering voice that was not his, 'if it was my genuine desire to leave.'

'Yes.'

'It is.'

'I see.'

Eric waited, but Godric said nothing else.

'I... I disown nothing,' he gasped out, so very conscious of his breathy voice coming out of his half-naked body, and his skin that still scorched from the touch. 'I shred nothing,' he added, recalling the way Godric had described his request. 'I beg only for my freedom.'

'No.'

When it became clear no further response was coming, Eric rearranged his clothes with a pained effort, and with a wretched one he stood. 

'There are centuries of love and affection between us.' He did not expect a change of heart, but he had to try one last time. 'Let us not dishonour them.' Not a hair in Godric's considerably dishevelled head moved. With a steadying breath, he added, 'Let me go.'

'You are mine, and mine you will remain,' Godric said, addressing the window. His voice was strained, but it brooked no argument.

Eric tied back his messy hair with his necklace, mostly for an excuse not to raise his eyes. He couldn’t argue with the truth of that. Even the Viking retreated, admitting defeat, knowing he would come, always, wherever that may be, whenever he felt needed, however deep the resentment still burnt. He was. 

It made the next step no easier.

'Then command me to stay.'

Godric turned around slowly.

Eric walked right up to him, holding his gaze, stooping to show his submission, to make it clear that he meant his words. 'Command me to stay,' he repeated with a stiff nod. 

Godric looked up – and up – at his mighty child. So uncharacteristically frazzled just a moment ago, he now returned Eric’s gaze steadily, apparently pondering the idea.

In an absurd role reversal, Eric found himself arguing for his own subjugation. Not for all his devotion would be stay otherwise, he would end himself first, and Godric must know it.

'Command my presence, and you will have it. Always. I ask only that you let me remember it.' Hesitantly, he added, 'Please.'

'To be hated by one's most beloved,' Godric mused aloud, 'or to be abandoned by him. What a choice you present to me.'

'I won't... hate you,' Eric mumbled, looking down. He rolled his shoulders, his hands clenched and unclenched, and settled on the impossible task of straightening his ruined shirt. 'I am loyal. I _will be_ loyal.' And, after a pause, 'And my feelings will be true.’

'Whatever they may be,' Godric added, lowering his eyes to the sideboard behind him and running his fingers along the edge pensively. 

That sad little smile which had started their rift danced on his lips, and it seemed fitting. Eric chewed on the inside of his mouth. Finally, Godric looked back at him, right up into his face. A quick glance at the upper floor followed, and then they were locking eyes again. 

'Go, then.'

Eric stared at him. 'You will release me?'

'No.'

'But you won’t stop me?'

'Cruel, selfish and unhinged I may be,' Godric replied with a sigh, 'but I’m not daft. It’s plain that you—oh, will you sit down? My neck is hurting.'

Silently, Eric lowered himself onto one knee. That, too, seemed fitting. Godric mimicked him after a second, and again they were at eye level, almost as close as before, on that carpet. He leaned in with an intense look on his face, and Eric thought he might kiss him again, or bite him, or hit him. But he didn’t. He rested his hands loosely around Eric’s neck, bringing their foreheads together, and nothing followed.

'You were going to say...?'

'It doesn’t matter.'

They knelt together for a long, long moment, alone with the heat inside their dead hearts and their bond weaving around them, deeper than love, stronger than sex, and anger, and time.

'I...' Eric tried to break the silence, but he could find no more words. The sound hung around them, abandoned. 

A twinkle of amusement shone in Godric's eyes, and a glimpse of their shared past lightened the moment. 

'My silly Viking,' Godric eventually contributed. 'My most beloved, my own force of nature...' His arms tensed minutely around Eric's neck, almost the preamble to a hug. Eric’s resolve didn't falter, as such, but he found himself reluctant to move, to leave without a meaningful word, a deeper gesture, in keeping with Godric's manner.

'I must—'

'You won't be angry forever,' Godric interrupted, with some of his obstinate old self in his voice. 'If ten centuries cracked my heart of stone, they will take all that _sentiment_ inside you and roll about in it. Eventually.'

Sentiment, Eric mused, had never taken up much space inside him, and he suspected there would be even less of it left after tonight. Then again, Godric had always found things in him that no-one else saw, himself included. Perhaps he could let his maker have this. 

Their bond swayed around them, between them, under their skin, unbroken and unbreakable. Yet this was the end, Eric thought. The closing lines in the last chapter of their adventure. He would no longer be there to chase away Godric’s sadness. This was the last embrace. He ought to go before it obliterated his will again, he told himself, but he owed Godric, and himself, better than to run off like a coward. He didn't know what to say though, or what he could do, and the moment lengthened again, with only Godric gazing into his eyes, somewhat puzzled, probably reading his thoughts. 

But if a gesture was to be made, now was the moment and, as always, Eric's senses made the decision for him. Something that Godric could remember with tenderness. He lifted his arms, mirroring Godric's movement, and he rested them softly around Godric's shoulders, around his neck, shifting them that little bit closer. He tilted his head, leaning in, watching as Godric’s gaze lowered the closer he came, closer and closer, until he could feel a breath against his mouth. Something that he, himself, might remember with tenderness.

Then there were unsteady fingertips against his lips, and they were pushing him away. He looked up, confused.

'I didn't teach you cruelty,' Godric murmured. His fingertips rested, unmoving, against Eric's mouth, before fading like an echo. 'Don't learn it now.'

And with that, he sighed, stood and turned. Eric opened his mouth to say something, but Godric was already crossing the room with a measured stride, not looking back. The sound of the door clicking shut reverberated in the room, and Eric was left alone with his freedom.

-x-

The fizzing of Godric’s burning flesh crawled into Eric’s ears, and the smell of the cinders slithered up his nose. And then there was nothing left.

____

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Well, barring some potential grammar edits - I can see they're needed already - I think this really is the end for my Godric and Eric. Thank you for coming along one last time. I hope you've enjoyed it.


End file.
